2018 Red Hat Award winners |
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The Bioshares Biotech Summit is arguably one of the world's best Life Sciences investment conferences. Traditionally at Bioshares, held every winter in Queenstown, New Zealand, there has been an opening night dinner for the CEOs of biotech and medical device companies who are attending. Beginning in 2014 the rest of us have had our own knees-up, which we call the Peasants Dinner. The 2018 Peasants Dinner was held on Thursday 26 July 2018 in Arrowtown, about 20 minutes out of Queenstown. This year a massive 100 Peasants attended, making it a really great night. Peasants gives the Life Sciences community of Australia and New Zealand a chance to acknowledge some of its rock stars through the annual Red Hat Awards, which represents significant contributions to the growth of the sector by the rank and file. Here are the 2018 Red Hat Award winners. For previous years' winners click here.
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Dirk van DisselAssociate Director – Corporate, Baker Young Stockbrokers
Financier of the Year |
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If you’re involved in an Adelaide-based Life Sciences company in any way you will have come across Dirk and his colleagues at Baker Young, South Australia’s premier financial services outfit. Baker Young have a long track record of following and /or funding great Life Sciences companies, particularly those in their home territory like Bionomics. This year’s Financier of the Year award honours the effort that the Baker Young team have put into building their Life Sciences capability for well over a decade. In particular, it honours the transaction that helped fund Paradigm Biopharmaceuticals (ASX: PAR) in November 2017.
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Jenni PilcherGlobal CFO, Mach7 Technologies
Kiwi of the Year |
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Jenni Pilcher went to Massey University and started her career at PWC in Wellington but, after a stint in London in the late 1990s and early 2000s she came to Melbourne where she’s been ever since with her husband Jon Pilcher of Neuren Pharmaceuticals. Jenni was part of the team that oversaw the rise of the stem cell leader Mesoblast from 2007 to 2014 and she was briefly with Alchemia in 2014 and 2015 (the less said the better) before landing on her feet again at Mach7. That company is revolutionising the way medical images can be shared and accessed across healthcare enterprises. All through her career Jenni has retained that quietly spoken but determined Kiwi spirit.
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Tony LocantroInvestment Manager, Alto Capital
Cage Rattler of the Year |
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Tony is an ex-policeman who since the early 2000s has brought a policeman’s fearlessness and businesslike approach into the investment industry as an adviser, commentator and money manager. Tony’s specialty is small caps and his great talent is identifying bubbles in the market. He’s funny, irreverent, and calls a spade a spade. Take this tweet from January 2018: “Time to call BS, on lithium, cobalt, blockchain, crypto, milk powder, medical marijuana, and some SaaS fad chasers with no viable businesses or resources. Risk/reward profiles do not stack up. 70-80%+ downside risk as upside driven on technicals in lieu of underlying fundamentals”. People like Tony help keep the market real when it comes to understanding ASX-listed Life Sciences stocks.
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Michelle FraserFormer CEO, RHS Ltd
Best New Peasant |
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Michelle Fraser had a great 2017/2018, with the company she headed, the Adelaide-based genome sequencing technology play RHS Ltd, being sold to PerkinElmer in February 2018 for A$25m. This transaction saw the shareholders make out well over the entire listed life of the company as well as through individual funding rounds. RHS.grew from 2007 under Michelle’s leadership into a world leader in whole genome sequencing for pre-implantation genetic screening in IVF. Towards the end of RHS’s time as an independent company the technology offering had become particularly sophisticated, with a product called Doplify able to do single cell whole genome amplification as well as amplification of target sequences.
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James CampbellCEO, Patrys
Best Re-Rating, 2018 |
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James Campbell was formerly Chief Operating Officer of ChemGenex Pharmaceuticals, a company that moved from start-up to regulatory-stage drug developer over the period 2002 to 2011 before it was acquired by Cephalon for A$230m. That deal took place after the completion of clinical development for Synribo, a Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia agent. Synribo gained accelerated approval from the FDA only one year after Chemgenex was sold. With his Chemgenex experience, Campbell believes he can go all the way with his new company, Patrys, whose Deoxymab cell-penetrating monoclonal antibody interferes with cancer cell DNA Damage Response. The market really liked this story in 2017/2018, re-rating Patrys stock more than sixfold in response to some great pre-clinical data across a range of cancers.
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Deanne MillerChief Operating Offer, Immutep
First Lady |
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It’s harder to find a harder working Life Sciences company executive than Deanne Miller, who has been with Immutep, an immuno-oncology company, since 2012. A lawyer by background, Deanne brought exceptional corporate governance knowledge from her time at ASIC, Macquarie Bank, Westpac and RBC. At Immutep in 2014/15 she contributed to a complete makeover of that company in order to focus it on an immune checkpoint called LAG-3.
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James WilliamsCo-Founder and Investment Director, Yuuwa Capital
Hall of Fame |
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James is one of the quiet achievers for Life Sciences in Australia with a track record of success in the sector gained over many years and various kinds of companies. This native of Scotland, who now calls Western Australia home, left his quiet research job at UWA in 2000 to run Argus Biomedical, which brought to market the world’s first soft one-piece artificial cornea. He then helped the diagnostics company Resonance Health (ASX: RHT) to get started, co-founded the drug reformulator iCeutica in 2005, and helped sell it to the US drug developer Iroko Pharmaceuticals in 2011. Yuuwa Capital, a VC house, is now helping valuable companies like Adalta (ASX: 1AD) and Dimerix (ASX: DXB) to grow. James Williams is one of the early examples of what we’re seeing more or in Australia and New Zealand – the serial bio-entrepreneur
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