(Davos) The CEO of the American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, Albert Bourla, spoke on Wednesday of investment opportunities for large laboratories to overcome the financing difficulties that are beginning to experience smaller biotechnology companies.
The biotech sector “has had problems finding financing, with rising interest rates and other uncertainties in the world, because these are high risk investments. They have problems financing their studies,” he said at an event organized by the Wall Street Journal in Davos, on the sidelines of a meeting of the World Economic Forum.
“The smallest companies are completely dependent on the financial markets”, unlike large groups like Pfizer which have the means to finance themselves. “To operate in the next few months, they need someone to support them financially. And there are 5,000 in the United States,” he continued.
“Now is the time to be able to help biotechs by partnering with them,” he said.
“We are in the market to buy things, we are committed to buying technologies and projects that will become drugs,” Bourla said.
“It could be in one big (investment) or it could be in 10, but clearly we are looking to invest […] this year, in 2023,” he continued.
“We are going to invest billions of dollars to develop our business. What we’re not looking to do is buy a peer, another company like Pfizer,” he cautioned, however.
The American group has already made a lot of investments in biotechnologies. In particular, he joined forces in 2020 with the German BioNtech to develop a vaccine against COVID-19, which allowed him to pocket billions of dollars in revenue.