
VC style returns on 'unsexy' public health bets? Gates-backed Adjuvant Capital gathers $300M to mend a 'failure of imagination'
Glenn Rockman was summoned, about three years into a senior role on JP Morgan’s non-profit investment banking team, to a special assignment reviewing a pipeline of drugs, vaccines and diagnostics for neglected diseases the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had been funding since the millennium.
By then in 2010, many of these assets were moving close to regulatory approval, and the philanthropists thought they represented an attractive risk profile combined with interesting commercial potential. But they couldn’t find any private sector investors to take them over the finish line.
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