Strüngmann Single Family Office Invests In German Company BioNTech

Andreas and Thomas Strüngmann are the founders of the German pharma company Hexal. The brothers sold their company for $7.5B to Novartis in 2005. Since then, the Strüngmann’s are actively investing through their family offices. The brothers hold a major stake in BioNTech, a German biotech company – and recently also participated in the company’s $325M Series B.

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Individual immunotherapies against cancer and other diseases

BioNTech is working on innovative individual immunotherapies against cancer. The individual drugs of BionTech help to target cancer and other diseases through genetically modified T-cells. The Mainz-based company is operating as a holding with different areas: mRNA Pharmaceuticals, Cell & Gene Therapies, Protein Therapeutics, Small Molecules, Diagnostic and Manufacturing. Many drugs of BioNTech – like FixVAC or IVAC – have successfully absolved Phase 1 trials. The biotech company is globally the first company that has established a genome-based, patient-specific treatment concept and brought an mRNA-based cancer vaccination to clinical trials. BioNTech has partnerships with Lilly, Sanofi, Bayer and other major pharmaceutical company.

Strüngmann single family office as majority shareholder and important biotech investor

The Strüngmann brothers invested in BioNTech through their family office ATHOS Service from early on. Today, they are the largest shareholder of the Mainz-based company. Other investors of BioNTech include MIG Fonds, Redmile Group or Janus Henderson Investors. Also, further European family offices have shares in BioNTech. New investors in this round are Jebsen Capital (Hongkong), Mirae Asset Financial Group (South Corea), Steam Athena (China) and BVCF (China). The new investors – of whom no one is from Germany – show the significance of the family offices as biotech investors in Germany. Only a few domestic venture capital and private equity firms are targeting biotech investors, what results in a massive lack of funding for new companies. The Strüngmanns and other family offices like the biotech investment firm of Dietmar Hopp (Dievini) are filling this gap. Other investments of the Strüngmanns include startups like Affiris, apceth or Movinga.

Sources:

FAZ, 10.07.2019
Unsplash, 10.o7.2019

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