Tag: healthcare

Company News: LSP launches IPO of LSP Life Sciences Fund on NYSE Euronext

Having built an exceptional track record as one of Europe´s most successful and reputable investment firms in life sciences, LSP Life Sciences Partners has decided to set up a public fund, which has been taken public on NYSE Euronext today. The LSP Life Sciences Fund (ISIN: NL0009756394) is managed by Mark Wegter, Joep Muijrers and Geraldine O’Keeffe, all of which are seasoned investment professionals in the healthcare sector and have been responsible for LSP´s investments in public companies since 2008. Since then, the team has significantly outperformed the market and generated a return in excess of +150%, according to Mark Wegter.

The new fund takes a long-only investment strategy and allows generalist and retail investors to benefit from LSP´s outstanding expertise in life sciences – a highly complex and knowledge-driven sector.  While investing primarily in Europe, there will also be selected U.S. investments. The fund´s goal is to participate in all forms of primary or secondary offerings, including follow-on offerings, block trades and IPOs – given that the respective investee company passes the team´s strict, comprehensive diligence process, which is regarded as a key to success by LSP.

 

Food for Thought: Navigating A Changing Investor Relations Landscape in the Healthcare Sector

Even though professional principles in investor relations do apply to all industries, IR executives face important sector-specific developments and challenges. A recent whitepaper by Bloomberg and IR Magazine summarizes a roundtable held with IR professionals, buy-side and sell-side analysts in the healthcare sector.

Characterized by inherent long-term business strategies and goals, the healthcare industry faces increasing pressure from short-term oriented imvestors. At the same time, shortened investment horizons and the risk of high volatility requires IR professionals to have access to the same high-standard data analysis and monitoring tools as their buy- and sell-side counterparts. How to manage the conundrum of short-term trading and long-term business goals (and long-term oriented investors)? The challenge is to provide strong arguments and perspectives without over-selling the stock or ignoring rumors on the market. “Framing the issues and providing the necessary positioning to educate analysts and investors about the stock”, as the authors put it, remains the key to successful IR in the healthcare sector. Sounds a little bit too vague? Read further details in the whitepaper “A Healthy Debate: Navigating A Changing Investor Relations Landscape in the Healthcare Sector”!

Food for Thought: Improving Media Coverage on Healthcare

Whether it’s about vaccines, new drugs or side effects of existing medications –  media coverage of medical topics very often is poor and biased. Written from an industry or pharma critics perspective, it exaggerates either risks or benefits. In addition, writers often do not seem to be familiar with the various tedious tasks, steps and regulatory requirements of drug development.

Enter Media Doctor, an initiative by Australian academics and clinicians from the Newcastle Institute of Public Health, who are interested in promoting better and more accurate media coverage in the area of medical treatments. They founded Media Doctor Australia, a website reviewing and rating news items on medical treatments using a standardized rating scale. The website also presents examples of reports regarded as good or bad.

Media Doctor applies ten different rating criteria in six categories, respectively: Pharmaceutical, Adverse Effects, Diagnostic Tests, Surgical Procedure, Complementary and Alternative Medicines, and Other. As an example, an article is regarded unsatisfactory if it does not mention sources and possible conflict of interest or does not attempt at independent corroboration. A satisfactory story for example needs to discuss the strength of evidence in detail.

Meanwhile, the idea has spread to Canada, Hong Kong, and the U.S. (under the name of Healthnewsreview). The U.S. website in particular is very outspoken, and does not hesitate to label poor stories as “shovelware straight from a news release” or an “unbalanced story” providing only “two rosy anecdotes” as evidence.

Useful statistics provide the reader with insights on which media and journalists provide the most reliable stories. That’s exactly the lever for improvement, and – for journalists – also a possibility to demonstrate competence and quality.

akampion now has learned that a German version of Healthnewsreview is in preparation at the University of Dortmund’s Chair of Science Journalism. We will keep you updated on how and when the site will be up and running!

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