Professional Politics 101: Gregory Fehrenbach
Corrections or additions?
This article was published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on November 24,
1999. All rights reserved.
Biotechs Explained: Gordon Ramseier
by Barbara Fox
How to evaluate a biotech before you invest in it: Find
out whether it has its own products in the pipeline or makes a tool
kit for others to find products.
“The reasonably smart wisdom is that the selling of services or
tools creates a less sustainable and less profitable volume business
than developing drugs,” says Gordon Ramseier, a consultant
with the Sage Group in Bridgewater. “It is less risky to develop
a drug-finding tool, such as a genetically engineered mouse or a
combinatorial
library, but it will not take the lion’s share of the profit when
the drug goes on the market.”
Ramseier joins Robert S. Esposito of KPMG for their annual
report
on the state of the biotech business given to the Biotechnology
Council
of New Jersey. This year the meeting location will be an additional
incentive to attend, because it is set for Jasna Polana, the elegant
golf club that used to be the Johnson estate, on Wednesday, December
1, at 4:30 p.m. The title of the report is “The Rationale for
Strategic Consolidation Among Small and Microcap Biotech
Companies.”
Industry awards will also be presented as part of this holiday gala.
The entrance fee (this is too posh an event to call it a ticket price)
is $155. Call 609-890-3185.
Some companies, Ramseier says, are hybrids of the two types.
Pharmacopeia, for instance, does combinatorial chemistryand maintains a library, but it is also doing its own drug discovery.Medarex is another hybrid, because it has a geneticallyengineered mouse that can be considered a “tool kit” fordiscoveringdrugs, but it also has its own drugs in the pipeline. Ramseierbelievesthe value of Medarex will be largely generated by discovering drugsbecause drugs that get through the pipeline and come on the marketare the real income producers.Celgene. His conjecture is bolstered by the stock market’ssudden frenzy of excitement over Celgene, a Warren-based firm thatwas selling at $9 last year and was over $50 at press time. “Whatmakes the difference? They launched products, and now they look likea company with a pipeline of products,” says Ramseier.Enzon is another sleeper, a former tool kit company thatnow has a product to treat hepatitis. “The market woke up. Ofall the public biotechs in New Jersey on our list, Enzon has thehighestmarket cap of any, over $1 billion,” he says. (The market capis the value of the company based on the number of shares outstandingtimes the stock price.)Ramseier hastens to add that he is not an investment advisorand that any investment in a New Jersey biotech should be considereda risky one. “Because of a single event, perhaps a delay fromthe FDA, you can see their value change 40 percent in one day. Wedon’t have any public biotechs of the size of Amgen or Biogen, whichcan more easily absorb a single bad event.”Ramseier is one of the Sage Group’s six healthcare strategyconsultantswho work with companies directly and also with venture capitalistsand other investors (https://www.sagehealthcare.com). Each hasrun a small or emerging biotech/biomedical company at least once.A chemistry major at Washington & Lee, Class of 1966, with an MBAfrom Dartmouth’s Tuck School, Ramseier had been CEO of two firms –a California firm now known as Dura Pharmaceuticals, and a Minnesotafirm, OncoTherapeutics, which he moved to New Jersey and is now knownas Biomira and located on Eastpark Boulevard. He left Oncotherapeuticsin 1994.”We consult to our clients based on our collective experienceof how to make companies succeed. We put them in contact with theright people, introduce them to venture capitalists, and help smallcompanies put together deals with larger companies,” saysRamseier.Last summer he did a deal between a New Jersey-based Koreanpharmaceuticalcompany and OMP (Ortho McNeil Pharmaceuticals).Three of the group’s consultants have backgrounds inbiopharmaceuticalsand drugs and the other three focus on medical devices anddiagnostics.”Each of us has certain contacts so in one company one of us isgoing to be the best guy to call. Business developers in big companieshave desks piled high and a difficult time triaging everything. Ifwe call they tend to give some credence to what we are calling about,that they should at least look at it.”Venture capitalists call the Sage Group when they perceive that oneof their portfolio companies has a problem — perhaps to get adeal done or license a product quickly before the money runs out.”We can add horsepower to an effort,” says Ramseier. “Insome cases a company has rudimentary capabilities for businessdevelopmentand for doing deals with larger companies. In other cases they havequite capable people and can do a lot themselves. Where we can behelpful is broadening the contacts of the company. It is almostuniversalthat at whatever rate they are doing their business development, wecan accelerate it. We know the people at the other end of thetelephone.”In order to retain credibility, consultants must be selective aboutthe clients they work with. “We couldn’t sell a pig in apoke,”says Ramseier.– Barbara Figge FoxTop Of PageRecord SBA LoansValley National Bank is first and Fleet Bank in NewJersey is second in the state in the number of Small BusinessAdministrationloan approvals made this year. Prizes were handed out at theWoodbridgeHilton earlier this month.Valley National and Fleet Bank received Diamond and Gold awardsrespectivelyfor approving 100 or more SBA loans. Commerce Bank — whichrecentlyopened a branch on Route 33 — won a silver award for approving93 loans. In the bronze category, for 40 to 74 loans approved, werePNC Bank, First Union National Bank, and Summit Bank, among others.Summit approved $13.8 million in loans.Amboy National Bank (which has branches in Rocky Hill and Hopewell)won a special award for what is known as the 504 Loan Program. Fleet,Valley National, and PNC Bank were in the top 10 lenders tominorities.Of the $32.3 million loaned by Valley National, $8 million went tominorities in 40 loans. Of the $8.3 million that Fleet loaned overall,$3 million went to minorities in 47 loans.”These lenders are vital to SBA’s Guaranty Loan Program and thegrowth of the New Jersey small business economy,” saysFranciscoA. Marrero, noting a record year of lending in 1999 — 1,572loans for $395.5 million. To inquire about the possibility of an SBAloan, call Harry Menta at 973-645-6064.Top Of PageWomen PhilanthropistsWomen are philanthropists by nature, but just howgenerousthey are we are only beginning to find out. The National Foundationof Women Business Owners recently released the findings of a MerrillLynch study that shows that today’s accomplished women entrepreneursand executives make their choices about charitable donations on theirown (without outside input from husbands, etc.) and nearly half ofthem do it to the tune of $25,000 annually. All this is noteworthyinformation for fundraisers and development people.The Merrill Lynch study was based on a survey of the Committee of200, an organization of business women who own companies that haverevenues in excess of $15 million, or manage divisions of U.S.corporationsgenerating a minimum of $100 million each year.Smart business women are looking for organizations that are alsofinanciallysavvy, the report says, although women want to support the issuesthey care about. Education-related organizations were overwhelmingly(51 percent) popular among women philanthropists, with women’sorganizations(42 percent) and arts organizations (41 percent) closely following.However, the women surveyed said that fundraisers need to alter theirapproach to get the best results:Many women are put off by the way they are solicited byphilanthropic organizations. Forty-two percent felt that the way theywere approached was a moderate to significant barrier to their giving.Some women feel organizations are eager to please men,but not women. One out of every four women interviewed said that theydo not believe they are taken as seriously by philanthropicorganizationsas their male counterparts.Recognition is not a key factor in how women give. Infact, 40 percent surveyed said they don’t want to be recognized, and19 percent said they would like to be recognized only with othercontributors– no matter what the level of giving.Whether they shell out $100 or $100,000, women just aren’tlookingfor their name on a building, generally speaking. Rather, they preferto know that they gave back to the community and can help make abetterfuture for everyone.Top Of PageProfessional Politics 101: Gregory FehrenbachSteve Forbes, Donald Trump, and RossPerot — three icons of the American Dream — have each runpolitical campaigns on the premise that their business know-how wouldprevail where political experience is lacking. But what if the rulesof government and the rules of business are different?At the municipal level, the rules are very different, says GregoryFehrenbach, who oversees a budget of $32 million as the chiefadministratorfor Piscataway Township. “In business, if the law doesn’t prohibitit, it is permitted, but in municipal government, it’s just theopposite– if it’s not permitted in the law it is prohibited,” he says.”You have to know the rules of the game before you start playingthe game and it takes a long time to learn the rules — years andyears.”With 30 years of government service under his belt in the “secondmost regulated state in the nation,” Fehrenbach feels he knowsthose rules well — well enough to teach them to newly electedofficials as part of the municipal government certificate programoffered by the Rutgers Center for Government Service. Fehrenbachteachesthe five-session primer course, “The Power and Duties of theMunicipalGovernment,” beginning on Thursday, December 2, at Civic Square(Livingston Avenue and New Street) from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Othercoursescover municipal finance, planning and zoning, labor relations, publicrelations, ethics, budgeting, public purchasing, taxes, and meetings,and they are offered in various counties in the state. Call732-932-3640.Cost: $166.The courses are designed to show freshman politicians the ropes, butthey can also help experienced politicians (and concerned citizens)do their jobs better. “People who have been in office two or threeyears say I wish I took this class,” he says.The first thing that most freshman politicians are shocked to learnis that, no matter what size the budget, almost all of it is spentbefore they even take office, says Fehrenbach, who holds a BA ingovernmentand economics from Kings College, Class of 1969, and a graduate degreein public administration from the University of Wisconsin. “Whenyou look at a municipal budget for $20 million, you’re going to findthat the amount of that budget that is discretionary, that is notcommitted to something already by the law, is only a couple of hundredthousand, a small percent,” he says. The money is largelycontrolledby state agencies that “that regulate almost everything thatmunicipalitiesdo, whether it’s the conduct of meetings, police operations, orcourts.”Sound insidious? Only Massachusetts is more regulated than New Jersey,Fehrenbach says. But he doesn’t want to scare away enthusiastic,service-mindedindividuals who want to make a difference: “The purpose of thisclass is not to throw a wet blanket on that desire to make thingsbetter for their community,” he says. “As things have becomemore technical and more complicated, these courses can provide anappropriate introduction. It’s a minor baptism before they go intothe actual job on January 1.”Top Of PageWebsite Review: VertiNews.comAsian Assets Direct is a new niche newsletter providedby Straube Center-based VertiNews.com. Tim Shorrock, themanaging editor of the Internet-based newsletter, will concentrateon what he terms Asia’s biggest economic story — the sale toforeigninvestors of billions of dollars in assets and non-performing loansin South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and Japan. Correspondents arelocated in Bangkok, Seoul, Jakarta, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and New York.”As the financial crisis eases, U.S. and European banks andcompaniesare working behind the scenes, making deals with government-run assetmanagement companies, and, for the first time, taking control of Asianbanks and corporations,” says Shorrock. “Investors will findmaterials here they will not find anywhere else.”Founded by Dow Jones expatriates, VertiNews.com aims to cover,compile,and deliver news and research information for professionals (U.S.1, July 7). Its first vertical service was Commercial Real EstateDirect.Both websites are structured so that the front page can cover as muchmaterial as possible. Nearly two dozen headlines from other newssourcesare clickable in one column, and several major stories written byVertiNews reporters are in another column. The third column offersa limited search engine (no search by key word is available), regionalreports, and day-by-day headline summaries.For instance, recent offerings on the Commercial Real Estate siterange from an Associated Press story about a burned-out Philadelphiaskyscraper that is being demolished to a Boston-based fund that hasraised $195 million to invest in REITs and real estate operatingcompanies.On the Asian page, correspondents discuss how a United States fundis investing in a state-run bank in Korea, how a Thai group isbattlingcreditors over management control of a conglomerate, and how cellphone companies in Korea are a big hit with foreign investors.Would-be subscribers can get a free 30-day trial athttps://www.vertinews.com(609-730-9268).Top Of PageRutgers in JanuaryNew this year is a winter session at Rutgers, afour-weekintensive schedule offering 27 undergraduate and graduate courses.Register without a late fee by December 3 and take class from December23 to January 24.Courses will include foreign language, American culture, an instituteon topics in special education — and a field study of coral reefsand marine life in the Cayman Islands. Both traditional classroomstudy and distance-learning activities via the Internet will be used.Registration is available athttps://wintersession2000.rutgersonline.net.”If feedback from students and faculty is favorable, WinterSessionmay become a permanent option at Rutgers,” says RichardNovak,executive director of continuous education and distance learning.Top Of PageDonations PleaseThe Huntington’s Disease Society of America isselling its “2000 Entertainment Book,” a county-specific bookof coupons for everything from pizza to fine dining, laundry tomovies.The books, which make good gifts for the holidays, cost $30. Thesocietyis also selling Amaryllis bulbs at $10 each. Proceeds support researchand services for people with Huntington’s, a heritages terminaldiseasefor which there is no cure. Call 609-448-3500.The League of Women Voters in Princeton is collecting holidaygifts for WomanSpace, the organization that helps protect women andchildren from abuse, as it has done for the past 26 years. The wishlist includes children’s toys, women’s garments, and giftcertificates.New and unwrapped gifts should be delivered by Friday, December 17,at Weichert Realtors on 350 Nassau Street. Call 609-921-1900.The New Jersey Community Loan Fund is raising money by sellingtickets for the Friday, December 17, performance of “Play On!”at Crossroads Theater. Tickets start at $250 (for two) and go to $600(for six). Call 609-989-7766.Top Of PageNominating CPAsNominations are being accepted by the American Instituteof Certified Public Accountants for the second annual Business &IndustryHall of Fame Awards. The award honors who have “insight andvision”and demonstrate leadership, commitment, and strategic managementabilitynecessary to meet the challenges of the new economy.Nominations can be completed online athttps://www.aicpa.org/halloffameand must be in before December 31. call 212-596-6157.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
