Roberts Mitani: An Alternative Strategy for Life Science Investing

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...