Bjarne Tellmann is senior vice president and general counsel at GSK Consumer Healthcare, a joint venture that combines the consumer brands of GSK and Pfizer. He speaks to Global Finance about the intersectionality of his work.
Household saving is defined as the difference between a household’s disposable income and its expenditures on goods and services. During the pandemic it rose to historical highs everywhere.
On October 27, Global Finance conducted a Sub-custody Roundtable, moderated by publisher and editorial director Joseph Giarraputo. The Roundtable agenda covered crucial topics in the sub-custody sector including: the global and regional impact on the COVID-19 pandemic on sub-custodians; the effect ...
Thanks to videoconferencing tools from Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Skype and Slack, the onerous due diligence process of reviewing books and assets, negotiating with multiple bankers and lawyers and visiting factories can be done remotely. More than $1 trillion in deals have been concluded in the third quarter of this year, according to Dealogic, a 48% year-over-year increase.
In March, a little-known Massachusetts biotech company, Arrakis Therapeutics, was negotiating a $190 million investment with Swiss giant Roche. Roche’s team was supposed to jump in a plane and spend three days in Massachusetts reviewing Arrakis’ books. But the outbreak of the pandemic prevented travel, so they negotiated via Zoom before signing a partnership agreement—all in just a day and a half.
“Instead of meeting in a sterile law firm conference room, we interacted in our kitchens and living rooms,” says Michael Gilman, Arrakis Therapeutics’ CEO. “Teleconferencing gives a sense of intimacy and allows for empathy. You want to help the other side solve their problems.” Gilman says he was surprised at the efficiency of the process.
Consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal offers tips about due diligence best practices in the era of Covid-19: frequent status calls and access to virtual data rooms to analyze numbers remotely. Site visits are replaced by drone videos. That’s how investment bank TKO Miller helped SPI Lighting sell itself to competitor Bukas Lighting Group. A two-minute aerial view of its headquarters sealed the deal.
When Danish bioscience company Chr. Hansen acquired American UAS Laboratories in July, it still sent two people to confirm the address of the plant. Everything else was done virtually.