Cathy Zhang, head of Asia-Pacific equity capital markets at Morgan Stanley, sounded hoarse after a day of back-to-back meetings with companies keen to go public in Hong Kong. “It’s very possible that the value and number may exceed last year’s IPO figures, given the momentum we have seen in January,” Zhang said in an interview…
As Chinese biotech and pharmaceutical firms gain importance on the global stage, foreign investors from sovereign wealth funds to industry players are securing strategic stakes in their future success. International institutional investors have built up significant positions in Chinese biotech firms over the past decade. These positions often approach, and in some cases exceed, the…
“Biotechnology is a high-risk field like a ‘molecular casino’,” said founder Alex Zhavoronkov. “Even with artificial intelligence, you can lose 90 per cent of the time.” The 11-year-old company was training and testing an AI-powered drug-discovery tool, Pharma.AI, to “enable faster, cheaper and more successful drug discovery with higher novelty and confidence”, he said. Zhavoronkov…
Hong Kong’s vast lead over Singapore as a listing venue appears unassailable, with even the Southeast Asian city’s home-grown companies heading north to raise funds, but the city state remains determined to improve its allure, according to bankers and analysts. IFBH, a Singapore-incorporated Thai firm that is the world’s second-largest bottler of coconut water, started…