Roberts Mitani: An Alternative Strategy for Life Science Investing

At a time when bankers and investors, driven by quarter-to-quarter results, are always on the look-out for the next deal, Roberts Mitani has a different philosophy for investing in life sciences. "Our firm is built on developing long-term relationships with clients," says principal Bruce Roberts. "Building long-term relationships with clients allows us to be creative; for example, we can work on smaller transactions if that's what the client needs, because we receive warrants for our participation, and, unlike other banks, we know we'll be sticking around to witness the benefits of that kind of deal." The firm is also able to integrate both US and overseas investors.

When one first meets Bruce Roberts and Hideki Mitani, managing directors of their eponymous global private equity and financial/strategic advisory firm based in New York and Tokyo, neither strikes you as particularly contrarian in nature. Both Roberts, a thoughtful, Harvard-trained former corporate lawyer and successful businessman, and Mitani, an energetic former investment banker with 29 years of experience including stints at Goldman Sachs and Sumitomo Bank, would evidently have been quite at home in their previous corporate environments. But once you begin discussing with them the current state of life science investing, you then understand their passionate belief in the need for a change in how both traditional investment banks and private investors approach this market and why the two joined forces to create an organization designed to offer life science companies and investors an alternative approach to doing business.

At a time when bankers and investors are driven by quarter-to-quarter results and always on the look-out for the next...

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