GCV Powerlist 2016: Roel Bulthuis, MS Ventures

Roel Bulthuis, senior vice-president and managing director of MS Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of Germany-based Merck, is preparing for his workload to increase.

Bulthuis set up MS Ventures in 2009 and, and has built the €150m evergreen strategic venture fund into one of the leading early stage investors in the healthcare field. Part of MS Ventures is a Bioaccelerator Fund in Israel and a €30m Entrepreneur Partnership Program to fund spinouts from the parent company.

His ventures team doubled from seven to 14 in the first quarter of 2016 and Bulthuis shifted his line manager to report directly to the new CEO of Merck, Stefan Oschmann, who took over from Karl-Ludwig Kley.

Oschmann said: “Merck is a leading science and technology company, with three strong innovative business sectors.

“Beyond the innovation activities in our current businesses, we benefit significantly from the strategic investments we make through MS Ventures in our core fields and beyond our current scope. Roel has been instrumental in building the fund and is the driving force behind it.”

Although Bulthuis declined to reveal the details at the time of writing his GCV Powerlist 2016 profile, he indicated that the size of the funds would increase dramatically in the near future and will focus on some new strategic areas.

He said: “Merck is still a majority family-owned firm and they want to secure the long-term future of the company for the next generation. In addition to its healthcare business, Merck operates a leading life sciences business – including Milipore and Sigma Aldrich – as well as a world leading perfomance materials business.

“A great example of how venturing has helped move Merck in a new strategic direction is our investment in Progyny, formerly called Auxogyn, which does wonderful work in improving the success rates of in-vitro fertilisation.”

Our investments in companies like Progyny and other MS Venture portfolio companies, such as molecular biology technology company F-Star, have facilitated significant shifts in the acceptance of new technologies by our parent and helped transform its business, Bulthuis added.

Bulthuis is this year celebrating a decade at Merck Serono as, prior to establishing its venture fund, he was responsible for the negotiation of a range of licensing deals.

Previously, he was director in the biotech investment banking team at Fortis Bank. Before joining Fortis, Bulthuis worked at Devgen in Gent, Belgium, as a business analyst.

He holds a MSc in biopharmaceutical sciences from Leiden University, and an MBA in finance from the Helsinki School of Economics.