International Corporate Finance

Trained pharmacist with a PhD

in medicinal chemistry

Led IPO launch in 2016 for Aeglea

Biotherapeutics raising $50 million

Dr. Reinhard J. Ambros, Global

Head of Novartis Venture Funds,

leads the Swiss and American based

fund which has currently $2.5bn

invested in 50 portfolio companies.

Dr. Ambros previously served as Ma-

naging Director for the Novartis Bio-

Venture Fund and has also worked

with Novartis Corporate Finance

where he was the Head of Group

Strategic Planning, responsible for

post-merger integrations and was

global head for BD&L cardiovascu-

lar and metabolic diseases at Novar-

tis Pharma. His strategy is to develop

a diverse portfolio. At present, 20%

is invested in medical devices, dia-

gnostic and digital health opportu-

nities in 13 companies in Europe,

Switzerland and the UK, as well as

30 companies in the USA.

Dr Reinhard J. Ambros

President, NOVARTIS

VENTURE FUND

Holds an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate

School of Management

Served as Global Head and Senior Vice President

at Qualcomm Ventures

Nagraj Kashyap was hired in Janua-

ry 2016 as head of Microsoft’s new

strategic investment fund, Microsoft

Ventures. While the company has

invested in startups and young com-

panies to enhance their existing tech-

nology in recent years, it wanted to

consolidate all previous investment

programs into just one. As Kashyap

used to head Qualcomm Ventures, a

VC initiative from chip manufacturer

Qualcomm, which sells mobile pro-

cessors to international cell phone

makers, he has a lot of experience

in dealing with venture capitalists

from the mobile market. According

to him, the move to the cloud is the

industry’s main priority and therefore

Microsoft Ventures’ goal is to identify

those companies which can help faci-

litate this transition.

Nagraj Kashyap

Managing Director,

MICROSOFT VENTURES

Ranked No.2 on Forbes’ 2016 Midas List

Has invested in 80+ companies and helped

25+ companies exit profitably

An ex-partner at Kleiner Perkins,

Anderson trained at eBay, Microsoft,

Starbucks and Digital Equipment

before starting to ruminate on the

idea of founding a company in 2006.

Driven by his avid love for effecting

change, he quickly realized that

creating a seed fund to addresses the

gap between individual investors and

institutional venture capitalists would

be a better option, and created his

own one-man band Baseline, with

the support of angel investor Ron

Conway. Thanks to the lean operation,

this electronic dance music enthusiast

and former DJ moves quickly and by

rule of thumb, but his early bets on

Instagram (acquired by Facebook for

$1bn), Heroku (bought by Salesforce,

$250m), OMGPOP (sold to Zynga,

$180m) turned out to be hot.

Steve Anderson

Founder and Partner,

BASELINE VENTURES

Leaders League. Recently the amount

of funds raised by African private

equity firms has been constantly in-

creasing, as was the case for many GPs

around the world. Do you think there is

more momentum for Africa than for the

rest of the world?

Dorothy Kelso. As the African PE market is

still relatively small, the total value of Afri-

ca PE fundraising in any particular year is

dependent on whether larger PE funds an-

nounce a final close. 2015 was a bumper

year for fundraising in Africa because a hand-

ful of large funds achieved final closes during

the year. Overall, three funds accounted for

65% of the total funds closed during 2015.

Leaders League. Emerging markets like

Africa were impacted by real concerns

linked to economic growth. What, in

concrete terms, are the impacts?

D. K. 2015 saw fewer deals above $250m

compared with 2014, resulting in a drop

in overall total deal value from $8.1bn to

$2.5bn. This may be related to the uncertain

global economic environment. Nevertheless,

deals below $250m in size remained rela-

tively stable, with the total annual value of

these deals even increasing slightly in 2015

compared with 2014. Overall, as PE in Africa

matures, the industry is demonstrating resi-

lience and continued growth even as wider

concerns about emerging markets impact

the investment landscape. PE firms in Africa

continue to inject capital in a variety of sec-

tors from industrials to financial services mo-

bilizing local economies and creating jobs.

Leaders League. A few words on 2016...

D. K. 2016 is likely to see lower fundraising

totals than 2015 as there are fewer large

funds currently fundraising. Looking further

ahead, Africa’s fundamentals will continue to

provide opportunities of interest to PE inves-

tors. Notwithstanding the current uncer-

tainty around emerging market economies,

many PE investors in Africa have developed

the requisite skills, experience and

knowledge to continue to invest, grow and

add value to portfolio companies.

PE FIRMS IN AFRICA

CONTINUE TO INJECT

CAPITAL IN A VARIETY

OF SECTORS FROM

INDUSTRIALS TO FINANCIAL

SERVICES

“2015 was a bumper year for

fundraising in Africa”

Dorothy Kelso

Director, Head of Strategy and

Research, AFRICAN PRIVATE

EQUITY & VENTURE CAPITAL

ASSOCIATION (AVCA)

© Forbes

© Business Insider