Session X — Investment Banking Perspectives
The Market Is Warm, Not Hot — and That’s Exactly the Point
Three senior investment bankers — Sonia Gupta (Goldman Sachs), Jerry Lee (J.P. Morgan), Eric Tokat (Centerview Partners) — on biotech M&A, funding, and the China dynamic.
Market Recovery
- Biotech IPO volume: $2.5B YTD April 2026 — matching all of 2025 already
- XBI at 130 is “innovation-driven,” divorced from interest rate correlation
- Quality bar much higher: 2020-2021 had ~30% preclinical IPOs; “we broke the market — it’s getting fixed”
M&A as the Circulatory System
- 26 transactions >$1B in 2025 (record); 14 more in first 4 months of 2026
- Goldman advised on Avidity/Novartis (~9.2B) in three weeks — $20B recycled to investors
- Structural driver: patent cliffs — Lilly’s $75B incremental revenue trajectory goes to zero within years
- M&A is mandatory, not opportunistic
China: The Supply Is Unstoppable
- China: 17% of new molecular entities in clinical development (2015) → 48% (2025)
- Six or seven Chinese companies sold via M&A at 1/3 to 1/4 the price of equivalent US assets
- 150 east-to-west deals last year: 7B upfront — more than all HK/A-share biotech capital raises combined
- “China is being funded by BD”
TechBio
- Coefficient Bio/Anthropic ($400M) is notable but large-scale TechBio M&A awaits clinical proof of concept
- “Investors will not be able to look away the second we generate clinical proof of concept multiple times off a TechBio platform”
Funding Playbook
- Quality over window — clinical PoC or validated biology required
- M&A is a strategic option, not a failure mode
- Know the Chinese competitive landscape
- Dual-track (IPO + strategic) is the norm
- Speed is the organizing principle
- Avoid the hot market trap — “warm” is more durable
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