Mercia life sciences portfolio: Hearing from the companies

Mercia Asset Management is a regionally focused specialist asset manager with a stated intent to become the leading provider of supportive balance sheet, venture, private equity and debt capital to the UK regions, in transaction sizes typically below £10m.

As new COVID-19 vaccines are starting to appear with heartening regularity, we note that the explosion of potential new treatments will all require new diagnostics to measure their efficacy, as well as bio-manufacturing support to scale supply once they are approved. These are areas where Mercia has invested.

Following the recent life sciences portfolio update and our October research note, Life sciences helping the COVID-19 fight, in this interview, three of Mercia’s portfolio CEOs talk about their businesses: John Burt, CEO of Medherant; John von Benecke, CEO of Locate Bio; and Dr Harry Lamble, CEO of Sense Biodetection. They discuss the support they have received as part of the Mercia family, how their businesses have progressed, how COVID-19 has accelerated change across the sector and also touch on the likely drivers of future growth.

Life sciences is one of Mercia’s three focus sectors, with seven of its top 20 holdings at 31 March 2020 in the sector, valued at £29m in aggregate or 33% of total portfolio value, with another c 40 earlier-stage life sciences investments held across its third-party managed funds