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Big news – people moves
Claudia Fan Munce’s retirement as managing director of IBM’s Venture Capital Group, following other high-profile departures such as Nagraj Kashyap and Arvind Sodhani over the past year.
Tom Hockaday leaving Isis.
Exits
Jasper (Singtel and Temasek) after Gilt last month.
Rocket Internet has sold its food ordering sites in Europe, Mexia and Brazil to Just Eat, a London-based competitor, for $140 million.
IPOs
China-based, Merck & Co-backed immuno-oncology drug developer BeiGene floated on Nasdaq yesterday in a $158m IPO, the same day as genome editing company Editas Medicine.
Editas is also trading up, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see several more IPOs before the end of February.
But doubt it’ll be UBER, despite Fred Wilson’s demands as a non-shareholder.
Fundraising
Sesame Street’s new fund
Pierre Fabre, the 2nd largest French independent pharmaceutical group, have launched Pierre Fabre Fund for Innovation.
Two weeks ago, GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson were among the founders of the UK-based Apollo Therapeutics Fund, and they’ve teamed up again as limited partners in the $230m first fund closed by Medicxis Ventures, a life sciences-focused firm spun out of venture firm Index Ventures. GSK and Johnson & Johnson were previously LPs in Medicxis’ predecessor, the first life sciences fund raised by Index, in 2012.
Plus debuts slow, although Luma has two intel capital veterans.
Kuwait potentially throwing $100bn at its sovereign wealth fund.