Fovea Pharmaceuticals (France) - Dec 2007

unquote
01 December 2007

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Forbion Capital Partners has led a €30m second round of financing for Fovea Pharmaceuticals. Fovea’s existing partners, Sofinnova Partners, Abingworth, GIMV, The Wellcome Trust and Credit Agricole Private Equity, put forward more than half of the €30m financing, while Forbion financed the remainder of deal. The original investors first provided a €20.5m round in November 2005 and have now reinvested with a view to making Fovea a leader in the ophthalmology field. Forbion was originally approached by Fovea about the deal in summer 2007 and concluded the deal on 11 December 2007. Management retains a minority stake of less than 20%.

Company

Fovea Pharmaceuticals is a Paris-based pharmaceutical company created in May 2005 by managers and scientists specialising in the discovery and development of retinal disease drugs. The proceeds of the investment will be used to further develop its technology platform and advance the clinical and preclinical trials of its main four drugs in the pipeline: FOV1101, for chronic allergic conjunctivitis; FOV2302 and FOV2301 which treats acute and diabetic macular oedema respectively. The fourth FOV2501 will have clinical trials in the first half of 2009. The management team, which in the past has successfully taken the pharmaceutical company Transgene public, will seek a similar exit strategy in the next couple of years by either going public and selling to or partnering a large pharmaceutical group. Fovea currently employs around 40 people.

People

Sander Slootweg and Geert-Jan Mulder led the deal for Forbion. Slootweg will join the board of directors which is chaired by Bernard Gilly and includes Antoine Papiernik of Sofinnova; Tim Haines of Abingworth and Anthony Wild of Bows Pharmaceuticals.

Advisers

Equity - Ernst & Young, (Financial Due Diligence)Equity - SJ Berwin LLP, Christophe Baert, Pierre-Louis Perin (Legal)

Sourced from: France unquote" 88 (Feb 2008)