US healthcare investment firm Orbimed Advisors LLC has named its Israel team to manage its newly launched activities in the country.
Sources inform "Globes" that Dr. Nissim Darvish, Adv. Anat Naschitz and Aya Yakobovitz will serve as venture partners - senior executives who will not be involved full time with the fund. Darvish and Adv. Naschitz are both considered senior figures in Israel's venture capital industry. The new venture partners declined to comment on the report but sources in Israel's venture capital industry said that this is "a strong and respectable team." Orbomed was also unavailable for comment.
Darvish is expected to resign from Pitango Venture Capital, where he has been a partner for the past seven years. Naschitz is a former principal at Apax Partners, while Yakobovitz has a background in biological research and set up companies that eventually had exits worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Orbimed, which manages $5.5 billion and is one the world's largest investment funds, is eopxected to bid in the tender to establish and operate a government supported biomed fund. The deadline for submitting requests to participate in the tender is March 2.
The funds are a joint initiative of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor. The government will provide $80-100 million in subsidies for three biomedical investment funds, with the goal of leveraging the investment three-fold with private funding. The goal is to encourage the industry, especially drug development, by overcoming market failures and to encourage Israeli biomedical companies to stay in the country, rather than being sold at an early stage to foreign companies.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 15, 2010
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