Promotion fund planned New women’s network for start-ups

As of: 06/17/2021 1:58 p.m.

Women are a rarity in the boardrooms of young companies. As a study shows, this is also due to the corporate culture. A new network wants to change that. According to a study, women rarely make it to the top of listed start-ups. “The young companies repeat the design flaws of the previous generation: They grow without women,” said Wiebke Ankersen and Christian Berg, heads of the non-profit AllBright Foundation. The German-Swedish organization advocates more women and diversity in management positions. The proportion of women on the executive floor at the ten companies that were founded in the past 15 years and are represented in the DAX index family is 5.4 percent. For the 160 companies in the DAX, MDAX and SDAX, the average is 12.6 percent.

Men dominate

According to the study, the top young companies, with the exception of the online furniture retailer Home24 and the pharmaceutical company Medios, are almost exclusively made up of men. “The founders often surround themselves with people who are very similar to them and hold on to them,” says the study.

Delivery Hero is the only company in the top stock exchange league that still specifies the “target size zero”. This means that the DAX company has so far been planning the board of directors without women. The company declares that the composition of the management board has proven itself. “Of course, this does not rule out an increase in the proportion of women at this management level.”

Politicians decide on new quotas

A draft law recently passed by the Bundestag stipulates that in future at least one woman must sit on the board in listed and codetermine companies with more than 2000 employees and more than three board members. This must be taken into account when filling new posts.

According to the draft law, other companies that do not fall under the requirement should justify in future if they plan to run the board without women. If this does not happen, fines are to be threatened.

New investment network for start-ups

In order to support women in setting up companies, around 60 managers from large corporations and politicians have set up a network of women supporters. With their association encourageventures they want to accompany “female founders from the founding idea to the IPO” if at least one woman belongs to the founding team, explains initiator Ina Schlie.

For this purpose, the establishment of an “all-female growth fund” worth 100 to 200 million euros is planned, from which the support will be provided. Startups run by women have a harder time raising capital. “According to the Female Founders Monitor 2020, only five percent of the female founders’ teams have already received one million euros or more in external capital,” said Alexa Gorman from the software company SAP. “In the case of the founding teams, on the other hand, it is around 30 percent.” In addition to Schlie and Gorman, the network includes, among others, the former Minister of Economic Affairs Brigitte Zypries, the head of freight transport at Deutsche Bahn, Sigrid Nikutta, and Douglas boss Tina Müller

Industry collects billions Record sums for biotech companies

Status: 15.06.2021 10:46 a.m.

The successes of biotech companies such as BioNTech attract investors: The industry has a new financial record in Germany. But the exuberance could be followed by disillusionment. By Thomas Spinnler, tagesschau.de The entire biotech industry is currently benefiting greatly from the attention generated by the rapid and successful development of corona vaccines. The pandemic has given a boost to a sector that is already in the focus of many investors due to technological and medical advances in recent years. As the “Financial Times” (FT) reports, the venture capitalist Flagship Pioneering – one of the major investors in the Vaccine manufacturer Moderna – around $ 3.5 billion for a new fund. Its aim is to promote the next generation of biotech companies.

Fund tries a new model

When investing in the biotech industry, investors must calculate with particular risks. Many of the companies to invest in do not yet have a product on the market. It is uncertain whether this will ever be the case, as the path from research to a marketable product is very long and often fails.

01/06/2021

Flagship Pioneering is now trying a different way. What is special, according to “FT”, is that the fund’s goal is not the usual search for newly founded companies in which to invest. Rather, modern biotechnologies are to be developed in-house in certain segments under the umbrella of the fund. Only then are plans to set up companies as offshoots.

The profits are gushing

Unsurprisingly, financiers are on the lookout for business ideas; they smell a gigantic business. Just a look at the rapidly rising share prices of many companies in the past few months shows how convinced the market players are of a lucrative future for the sector. In fact, profits are gushing – at least for the best-known representatives who have successfully launched products. BioNTech generated a net profit of 1.1 billion euros in the first quarter of 2021. In the first quarter of 2020, the Mainz-based company had to accept a net loss of 53 million euros due to high research and development costs.

05/10/2021

The US vaccine manufacturer Moderna made in the first quarter profit – equal to a billion dollars. In the previous year, Moderna had to cope with a loss of 124 million. The turnover multiplied from eight million to 1.9 billion dollars. $ 1.7 billion of this comes from corona vaccine revenue. While Moderna shares rose by more than 200 percent in the past twelve months, BioNTech shares gained over 340 percent in the same period.

Lighthouse companies in particular benefit

In Germany, the biotech industry set a new financial record last year. As the experts from the testing and consulting company EY calculated in their Biotech Report 2021, financing in Germany reached a peak of 3.1 billion euros in 2020. A comparison with the USA shows the order of magnitude. According to EY, around $ 100 billion went into biotech financing for venture capitalists.

02/27/2021

“Covid-19 is a huge catalyst for the entire biotechnology industry,” said Alexander W. Nuyken, Head of the Life Sciences Sector in Strategy and Transactions at EY and co-author of the study. In their report, the experts at EY point out that the investments essentially relate to the flagship company BioNTech, which alone accounted for 51 percent of the financing volume in 2020. According to Nuyken, biotechnology is part of the solution to a problem that is a matter of fate for humanity. “That has come to mind.”

More help from the state?

This year it’s going on at a high pace: The “Handelsblatt” quotes from preliminary figures from the Bio Deutschland Association. Accordingly, the industry received a total of 870 million euros in capital from January to May. That is around three and a half times as much as in the same period last year. Nuyken campaigns for the state to help even more: “I hope that politicians show more will to improve framework conditions.” There is now an opportunity for the biotech scene to play a major role in this country in the long term or to play an even greater role in the future.

Hope for new products

In fact, taxpayers have already made a major contribution to making the industry so successful: Since the beginning of the pandemic, governments have allocated tens of billions to research and development on vaccines, which are now generating sales and profits for companies. However, it is uncertain whether, thanks to the many fresh billions, the supply of innovative medical products will make a leap. Nuyken warns of disappointing expectations: “If investors with no biotech experience think they can make a quick buck here, they’re wrong.” After the boom, the expert warns, disillusionment could quickly set in.