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#JPM15 Day 3 Buzz: We’ve captured the mood at JP Morgan – and that mood is oh so good

Someone said it: “We’re not limited by capital.” FierceBiotech on Wednesday delivered the first big verdict on the “mood” of the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference – based largely on its executive breakfast held this week in San Francisco. The verdict: Real confidence well above and beyond the typical happy face you’d get, regardless, at JP […]

By Chris Seper on January 15, 2015

Someone said it: “We’re not limited by capital.”

FierceBiotech on Wednesday delivered the first big verdict on the “mood” of the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference – based largely on its executive breakfast held this week in San Francisco. The verdict: Real confidence well above and beyond the typical happy face you’d get, regardless, at JP Morgan.

Boiled down in the business development group, it amounted to this: Damn the valuations and full speed ahead. Those higher biotech numbers you’ve been hearing about are now an accepted part of the industry scene. And dealmakers this year were happy to discuss their appetite for blockbuster collaborations and acquisitions.

“We are not limited by capital,” says James Sabry, a biotech vet who now orchestrates deals for Genentech. Last year he set up the $1.7 billion buyout for Seragon, and he said he’d be happy to do similar acquisitions reaching around the $1.5 billion to $3 billion mark this year as well–along with a string of much smaller pacts. (Move up into the stratosphere of $8 billion to $10 billion-plus, though, and you’re talking about deals that will be executed in CEO Severin Schwan’s office suite in Basel).

“The complexity of the industry has gone up in the past 5 years dramatically,” says Sabry, making dealmaking for complementary technology an essential ingredient for any company along the lines of Genentech. And smaller players are following the same game plan.

Gotta love that headline, too. DAMN THE BIOTECH VALUATIONS!!!!!!

But Fierce wasn’t the only one confirming the mood. One Forbes contributor wrote: “It’s not hard to find indications that biotech investors are a bit woozy with optimism…”

We have a theme, too…

and that theme is “partnerships.”

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The Wall Street Journal: A little delusional

The digital health industry has amazing marketers.

Come on, man.

Everyone’s got to find something wrong, I guess.

Notable Wednesday JP Morgan conference headlines

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