Business Development

Is Switzerland Becoming Europe’s Biotech Capital?

Melanie Senior
IN VIVO (2004) October 58-61
(Data provided by Meinrad Good, Target BioScience AG)

Biogen Idec’s decision to move its international headquarters from Paris to Switzerland reflects the growing size, and changing structure, of its international business. It also increases Switzerland’s already strong allure as Europe’s friendliest biotech hub.

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Valuation of Biotech Companies

Philipp Alena, Meinrad Good, Wolfgang Knecht, Markus Scheidegger
«Management Weiterbildung» University of Zurich, 2002
Verlag Paul Haupt, Bern, Stuttgart, Wien
ISBN3-258-06481-4.

This work focuses on the assessment of novel Biotechnology companies with emphasis on financial valuations. Relevant valuation concepts are introduced and examined for their applicability to companies within the Biotech sector. The primary objective of this work was to validate the theoretical models in real-world cases and to gain insight into, how valuation performs in practice. In our example analysis of the Biotech company BioMarin, we applied several valuation models and compared our results to the actual results by the bank Vontobel. We concluded that most standard methods - except one deviated significantly from the actual price. The so-called method of comparables where the enterprise value is estimated according to the price of similar companies in the same industry gave the best result and was also used exclusively by Vontobel to set the initial public offering (IPO) price range for BioMarin. The stock price development at NASDAQ since its IPO in 1999 has confirmed this valuation.

Table of Contents PDF, 38.38 KB

A manuscript of this work may be obtained. Please contact Dr. Meinrad Good and use Contact Form