ICG hires Bridge Valley's life sciences investment team

Katharine Hidalgo
22 January 2021

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ICG has hired Bridge Valley Ventures' life sciences investment team, to be led by Allan Marchington.

The team will invest in clinical- and late-stage, not early-stage, biotechnology companies to enter the broader healthcare sector.

Marchington, who will become managing director and head of ICG life sciences, said the team has a strong pipeline of potential new investment opportunities. The team will be based in London and Boston. He is joined by Toby Sykes, Simon Tate, Peter Kiener and Tracy Weightman, who, in addition to Marchington, all previously worked together at Bridge Valley.

The team will focus on making equity investments in companies in the UK, Europe and North America. Individual ticket sizes will be relatively small, structured in ways that are typical for these types of investments, said Marchington.

Before founding Bridge Valley, Marchington was a founding partner at Apposite Capital for more than 10 years. Prior to that, he founded, led and sold Cambridge Discovery Chemistry. He has held board positions at a number of companies, including Convergence Pharmaceuticals.

Marchington said: "Biotech is a segment of the healthcare industry with particularly attractive and sustainable growth drivers, playing a central role in healthcare innovation, advancing differentiated and novel therapies in diseases of high unmet need. We will also take advantage of the UK's leading position in European life sciences.

"We will target investments where there is a compelling rationale for working with ICG, and we can have significant influence and add value, based on the differentiated expertise of the team and the size of the investment, for example.

Sykes joins as managing director. Previously he was a managing partner at Syncona and a managing director at Essex Woodland, where he was responsible for sourcing and managing venture and growth investments across Europe and North America.

Tate also joins as managing director. He was a founding partner of Bridge Valley and, prior to his investment career, he held senior leadership roles in the therapeutic areas of pain and neuroscience at Biogen and GSK. Tate was one of the founders and chief scientific officer of Convergence Pharmaceuticals, and became its CEO following its acquisition by Biogen.

Kiener is joining as a venture partner and has held senior and executive positions at Bristol Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca, and previously held chief scientific officer and R&D leadership positions at Sucampo and Zyngenia.

Weightman joins the team as an associate director. She has held positions at Epidarex Capital, Cancer Research UK, Edinburgh BioQuarter, Fulcrum Pharma and Quintiles.