As­traZeneca's Chi­nese in­vest­ment bank part­ner rais­es $229M for its own new fund — and it's all about the coro­n­avirus

Last No­vem­ber’s news about As­traZeneca launch­ing a $1 bil­lion ven­ture fund with Chi­na In­ter­na­tion­al Cap­i­tal Cor­po­ra­tion (CI­CC) to in­vest in up-and-com­ing play­ers was wide­ly viewed as il­lus­tra­tive of the British drug­mak­er’s am­bi­tions in Chi­na. As it turns out, it’s just as much about CI­CC — Chi­na’s largest in­vest­ment bank — and its plans in bio­med­i­cine.

Days af­ter an­nounc­ing the As­traZeneca fund, state-backed CI­CC dis­closed that it’s team­ing up with 11 do­mes­tic firms to raise a fund ded­i­cat­ed to in­no­v­a­tive drugs, in vit­ro di­ag­no­sis, med­ical tech­nol­o­gy and health IT. It’s now closed at $229 mil­lion (RMB$1.6 bil­lion), ac­cord­ing to a state­ment.

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