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We always attend BIO-Europe in force
You could find Dr. Klaus Schoepe, the head of project management for Rentschler, at the entrance to the exhibition space for
BIO-Europe's exhibition area, when Schoepe was not in partner meetings.
"This is our sixth year at BIO-Europe, and of course we challenge the expense every year," he said. "But then we look at the outcomes
and then say we will do it again."
On the second day of the event he announced that the decision whether to attend BIO-Europe 2008 is "a no-brainer."
"We get good traffic at the stand with general inquiries and follow up contacts. It is quite a mixture that helps us to identify new leads." he said.
"We are quite pleased with where this is going," he said.
Evelyn Schmucker with Boehringer-Ingelheim (BI) said BIO-Europe 2007 marks her 10th year at the event and two days into the action,
she told BEU Partnering News that everything, in a word, is perfect, "We are using everything, all the possibilities. We are speaking
on panel discussions, we made two company presentations on contract manufacturing and in-licensing processes, we have this exhibition
stand, and we are heavy users of the partnering software."
She said BI has 20 representatives at the event with 15 working intensively at partnering meetings. The five others have "just a few
scheduled meetings because they are either in the conference sessions or else here at the stand".
BIO-Europe is a reliable source for new business for BI and it also promotes the company image, said Schmucker, who is charged with
marketing and communications.
The exhibition also serves a key function, "because there are a lot of what I call 'Friends of BI' who come by just to say hello.
The space gives us a place for meeting with them informally, and it also serves as the base for our own team since we have colleagues
here from the US, Canada and Vienna."
"Are we scouts hunting for new partners? Yes, of course," said Marc de Hullu with Johnson & Johnson, a company representative from the
Netherlands who was surprised at the question. "Scouting is the only reason we are here at BIO-Europe."
Asked in an equally blunt manner why J&J is content with a modest exhibition stand compared to the Hollywood stage sets the company
features at industry product expos, he replied flatly, "Our senior managers speak on several plenary and workshop panels and that is
what enhances our public image here."
"We have 13 people at BIO-Europe and scheduled more than 100 meetings before we arrived," he said.
De Hullu said he likes what he called the "reasonable scale of this event. Here we are really able to meet people. Business
opportunity is not a switch you turn on and off, it is a matter of continuing contacts and always starting new ones. That is what we
do here."
Frédérique Touitou with UBI-France told BEU Partnering News, this is the second year for the state-supported export agency. "Last year
we had 20 companies affiliated with the UBI-France delegation and this year we have twice that with 40 companies. I would say that is a
good sign."
They all come for the partnering, she said. Two companies elected to sponsor an exhibition at the stand, the biotech firm Genfit,
and Septimanie the Pôle de Competitivité for the region Languedoc-Roussillon.
On her way to a scheduled partnering meeting a member of the French delegation, Anne DeFlisque with MilleGen said she is averaging
seven to eight meetings each day. "But I meet with people who are having 20 meetings a day, which is intimidating. I don't know how
they do it," she said.
Guillaume Vignon is in his first year working with Merck Serono International and was attending BIO-Europe for the first time.
Partnering News caught him at the exhibition stand with 10 minutes before his next meeting.
Vignon said the company has eight people at BIO-Europe, seven of whom are continually in meetings. The eighth is Vincent Aurentz,
Senior Executive Vice President for Portfolio Management & Business Development, who at the moment was a featured panelist in the
plenary session "A Day in the Life of Experienced Dealmakers."
In addition to the exhibition, Merck Serono also took advantage of the opportunity to make a company presentation about how it works
with "concrete examples of our win-win approach. It was crowded even though it took place in the large plenary presentation space,"
he said.
Part of the Merck Serono team focuses on partner search and evaluation, said Vignon, while others are on the negotiation side.
"One side is open to finding start ups, up to and including academics, to determine their partnering intentions. The others say what
it is that we expect," he said. His own role is to learn what potential partners are looking for, he said, and then determine the
right next steps.
Tracy Weightman, Business Development Associate with Fulcrum Pharma Development in Edinburgh told us: "We are focused on small biotech companies, and this is defintely the place to meet them. In fact, they have been contacting us through
the partnerign software, which is quite good. We were even contacted by a small company in Scotland we did not know even existed. So
is is good to keep up."
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