“It could open the pharmaceutical field for a new class of molecules,” Sahin said in an interview Monday.
‘Big Elephants’
After taking over family-owned drug company Durachemie from their father Ernst in 1979, the brothers sold it seven years later and used the proceeds to set up Hexal. They started with about two-dozen employees in an apartment building near Munich and grew it into the world’s fourth-largest generic-drug company.
“Our strength is speed and flexibility,” Thomas, who has a doctorate in business management, said in a 2004 interview. “While the big elephants are making their decisions, we have already taken action.”
BioNTech’s U.S. initial public offering last year capped off a busy decade for the brothers.
Since 2010, they’ve co-invested with EQT AB in a hearing-aid business from Siemens AG, sold German lender Suedwestbank AG for more than double what they paid for it in 2004 and snapped up stakes in numerous biotech firms including Immatics NV, which recently merged with Arya Sciences Acquisition Corp.
Not all their bets have paid off.
Immatics’s share price has fallen about a third since it began trading on the Nasdaq in July, while 4SC AG, a German cancer-drug firm in which the Struengmanns are majority shareholders, is down more than a fifth this year. BioNTech had a rocky start, pricing its IPO below its target range, though its shares have since surged 580%.
“For us, it’s not primarily about returns,” Thomas said in the Handelsblatt interview. It’s “above all about generating highly effective medical innovations.”
-With assistance from Pei Yi Mak, Tom Maloney and Tom Metcalf.
This story was provided by Bloomberg News.