After a decade in corporate venturing, Anja König as managing director is an integral part in identifying life sciences opportunities in the UK, Switzerland, and other parts of Europe for pharmaceutical firm Novartis’ corporate venturing unit, the Novartis Venture Fund.
A graduate of Oxford, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Cornell, König was an associate partner at management consultancy firm McKinsey for six years from 2000, where she worked with healthcare, pharmaceutical and biotech firms on both sides of the Atlantic.
In her current portfolio are biotech Bicycle Therapeutics, which received $32m in 2014 along with corporate venturing peers SR One, UK-based anti-fungal drug developer F2G, which received $60m last year and Forendo Pharma, which secured $12.8m in 2014.
She has also overseen several successful exits for Novartis, including Heptares Therapeutics, acquired by Sosei for up to $400m in 2015, and Covagen, a life science firm targeting cancer and inflammatory diseases.
Novartis has supported Covagen since its 2009 seed round and led its $50m series B, sold to Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Cilag for an unspecified sum in 2014.
König has also had two flotations. Qurient Therapeutics listed on Korea’s Kosdaq stock exchange last year after spinning out from Institut Pasteur Korea, a research institute focused on curing infectious diseases, in 2008. Qurient raised KrW32.5bn ($26m) in its IPO through the sale of 1.5 million shares at KrW21,000 each.
König also worked with biotech Nabriva Therapeutics, which received $44.7m in 2006 in a series A and a further $120m in its 2015 series B, ahead of its IPO later in the year.
