Barcelona to host Bio€quity Europe 2019, the most important biotechnology investor conference in Europe

Bio€quity Europe, the longest running, independent investor event serving the European biopharma industry, will take place in Barcelona for the first time on May 20-21, 2019. It provides a forum for the international venture capital communities to establish relationships with the management teams of hand-picked companies selected by BioCentury with promising investment prospects. The event will be held in Barcelona at the initiative of the Host Regional Committee, which brings together four organizations: Biocat, Ysios Capital, ACCIÓ y CataloniaBio & HealthTech.

Bio€quity Europe – which is organized by BioCentury and EBD Group -- is the seminal industry event for financial dealmakers looking for investor-validated life science companies positioning themselves to attract capital, and for pharmaceutical licensing professionals to assess top prospects. Bio€quity Europe has showcased more than 800 leading European companies to thousands of investment and pharma business development professionals. More than 550 delegates from 26 nations attended Bio€quity Europe in Ghent in 2018.

The organizers selected Barcelona for its 20^th annual event based on a number of key criteria. "Barcelona has all of the key ingredients for a vibrant life sciences ecosystem -said Eric Pierce, Publisher at BioCentury-. The region has solid academic science, a risk-taking, entrepreneurial culture and a growing pool of venture capital, all of which are essential to establishing, fostering and growing life science innovators”. Holding Bio€quity Europe in Barcelona will be an outstanding opportunity for Barcelona and the BioRegion of Catalonia to showcase to the world this fertile environment to conduct biopharma business. “We are pleased to celebrate our 20^th anniversary in collaboration with the Biocat and Regional Host Committee members.”

Jordi Naval, Strategy Director of Biocat, emphasizes the significance of this investors’ conference in Barcelona: “Bio€quityEurope will allow us showcase how Barcelona and the BioRegion of Catalonia have become a destination of choice for biotech investment in Europe. In the last years our biotech companies have attracted an average of 135M€/year in investment. There are over 40 international investors participating in life sciences companies of the BioRegion of Catalonia already - most of them from US - and the figure has almost doubled in just 2 years”.

Joan Romero, CEO of Catalonia Trade & Investment, stresses that “connections with international investors are key to the growth and development of the hub of 1,250 Catalan start-ups. So, the fact that Bio€quity Europe 2019 will be held in Barcelona is decisive: venture capitalists from around the world will get a first-hand look at our ecosystem, which is one of the most dynamic in Europe, above all in biotechnology and the life sciences. International capital risk is looking more and more to Catalonia. Events like Bio€quity Europe choosing Barcelona is further proof that Catalan start-ups have the right assets to move up and become successful on a global level.”

Joël Jean-Mairet, Managing Partner at Ysios Capital, comments “Barcelona is becoming a hot biotech hub in Europe, and hosting Bio€quity Europe in Barcelona will allow international investors to interact with local biotech companies and to see first-hand the evolution of the rising Spanish biotechnology ecosystem.”

Jaume Amat, president of CataloniaBio & HealthTech and CEO of Specipig, says, “Bringing Bio€quity Europe 2019 to Barcelona will strengthen our sector’s position on the international biomedical investment scene. We have a growing, maturing ecosystem, as can be seen in the data from the latest report we published with EY, and this fair can be a good catalyst to attract more investment that will speed up the transfer of innovative medicines and medical technology to market.”