- International investment firm Omega Funds announced it closed Omega Fund VI with $438 million in capital commitments
International investment firm Omega Funds announced that it closed Omega Fund VI with $438 million in capital commitments. Fund VI is going to continue to execute on the firm’s strategy of creating and investing in life sciences companies that target the most urgent medical needs.
Ever since Omega Funds launched in 2004, Omega Funds has raised over $1 billion to invest in exceptional entrepreneurs developing innovative products across multiple therapeutic areas, including oncology, immunology, rare diseases, precision medicine, etc.
Omega Funds has a strong record of identifying and supporting great management teams and companies by providing domain knowledge, network connectivity, and capital. And Omega Funds’ portfolio companies have brought 37 new products to market and the firm’s investments have contributed to 24 successful portfolio company IPOs and 35 portfolio company exits via M&A.
“We appreciate the trust from our limited partners and their support of our distinctive investment style, which is guided by our conviction in people, products and breakthrough ideas, not by conventional categories,” said Otello Stampacchia, PhD, Managing Director of Omega Funds. “Fund VI builds on our modus operandi aimed at investing in and, in many cases, actively combining innovative science with exceptional founders and company builders.”
The Fund VI is stage-agnostic and is expected to be deployed across companies in the US and Europe. Just like the past funds, Fund VI investments will include a variety of investment approaches from company founding and creation to early venture rounds and late-stage public investing as well as direct secondary transactions.
“We believe this is the most exciting time to be investing in life sciences in a generation, but it requires diverse skills to capture the opportunity set,” Stampacchia added. “At Omega, we have thoughtfully assembled a team that has the experience, insights and connections needed to successfully identify and harvest innovation from both sides of the Atlantic.”
Omega Funds also announced that industry veteran Bernard Davitian is joining the firm as a partner, starting in January 2020. And recent additions to the Omega Funds team also include Deirdre Cunnane, JD (who joined as Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel in October 2019) as well as Paulina Hill, PhD (who joined as Principal), and Katie Kerfoot (who joined as head of Investor Relations) both of whom joined in January 2019.
Davitian has substantial experience in the life sciences and biotech industry, marked by a number of successful transactions involving financings and M&A. And he previously served as SVP and Managing Director at Sanofi Ventures, having first joined Sanofi in 2010 as Vice President, Deputy Global Head, Business Development. Before Sanofi, Davitian held leadership roles at Fovea Pharmaceuticals — which was sold to Sanofi in 2009 in a EUR370 million cash transaction, Neurotech Pharmaceuticals, Transgene, which successfully raised $100 million in a 1998 IPO on the NASDAQ and EuroNext, as well as Institut Mérieux (now Sanofi Pasteur).
Cunnane, COO & GC, has held similar roles both in venture funds and within a biotech company. And she joins Omega Funds from Catabasis Pharmaceuticals, a publicly traded biotech company where she held multiple leadership positions over the past four years. Before joining Catabasis, Cunnane served as General Counsel at Advanced Technology Ventures and Lightstone Ventures.
Before joining Omega Funds, Hill was on the healthcare team at Polaris Partners since 2012. And she completed her postdoctoral fellowship in Robert Langer’s lab in the Chemical Engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned her Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
Plus Kerfoot joined Omega Funds to lead the firm’s communications strategy and investor relations initiatives, including marketing and fundraising. Prior to joining Omega Funds, Kerfoot covered specialty pharmaceutical companies as an equity research analyst at Wells Fargo Securities and BMO Capital Markets in New York. And Kerfoot has an extensive journalism background, including on-air reporting with an NBC-affiliate local news station and a national online news network.
