We accomplished another year of substantial growth. Novartis BioVentures Ltd (Bermuda) holds more than USD 700 mio under management and is adviced by stable investment teams based at affiliates in Basel Switzerland and Cambridge, MA USA. In 2009 our portfolio increased by twelve new investments and now comprises over 60 companies, making the NVF one of the world's largest corporate biotech venture funds. Including the commitment of other investors, about USD 2 bn is currently invested in total into NVF portfolio companies. We achieved four liquidity events over this year and are confident we will be able to maintain our superb performance in the next years.
Investment Philosophy
We have been able to establish ourselves as a trusted, respected and value-added investor. We look forward to continue operating as a financially driven corporate life science investor offering support to those companies which have the potential to lead the next innovation wave and explore new business areas that will be critical to patient care and the healthcare industry. The broad and substantial experience of the fund management team will contribute to the success of our portfolio companies and we take an active role in nurturing and supporting our companies by having board or observer representation.
Investment Focus
Our primary focus will remain on the development of novel therapeutics and platforms. We enhance the therapeutic focus with investments in medical devices, diagnostics or drug delivery systems. In our investments we look for unmet need and clinical impact, novel proprietary science and understanding of mechanism, management and board experience and capital efficiency in the program.
We prefer to have our initial investment at the early stage to build the company and follow with additional investment in pace with the company's progress. We continue our approach of larger focused investments and anticipate total investments up to USD15-20 mio per company over its life, but it can be as little as 100000 USD to get started. We will continue our activities to lead or co-lead deals further and remain open to participate in larger syndicates.
