Behind the scenes of an operation that could exceed €1 billion.
The MGA group, led by Marisa Guitart, was key in 2013 in driving the series B financing of Sanifit, which would end up being bought by Vifor at the end of 2021.
MARISA GUITART AMECHAZURRA
TEAM PIMIENTA: ANNA, JORDI, ALBERT.
SITGES (BARCELONA), DECEMBER 2021
Eight years separate the first meeting between the heads of Sanifit and the MGA group and the millionaire sale of this Balearic biotech born in a university laboratory (UIB) to the Swiss pharmaceutical company Vifor.
We want to meet one of the protagonists, who subtly appears behind a group of people who call themselves the MGA Group.
Her name hardly appears in any of the journalistic chronicles we read about the sale of Sanifit, the largest in the history of a Spanish biotech company. Without further ado, I contact Marisa, whom I have the pleasure and pride of knowing personally, and I ask her directly about our interest in finding out what it was like, what exactly the MGA Group is, and what about Sanifit.
Our objective is for Marisa to explain to us in first person the untold story of Sanifit and its molecule SNF-472 -provisional name- because it is undoubtedly great news: if it becomes a drug, it will improve the lives of many patients with calciphylaxis and also of the peripheral arterial disease suffered by many dialysis patients.
She agrees without a moment’s hesitation. I can affirm that Marisa is like that, open, energetic, intelligent and extremely generous, I speak with knowledge of cause because I have the honor of being an ambassador of her NGO, Las Historias de Sofía. But that’s another topic, let’s get back to the million-dollar sale of Sanifit.
I travel with the team to interview Marisa Guitart Amechazurra, the initials of the veteran CEO of the business consultancy MGA Business Consulting, specialized in ‘life sciences’.
She very kindly opens the doors for us, in the best possible way. We arrive at the agreed time and Marisa leads us to her office, located in her family residence. We enter a pleasant room with large windows decorated with great taste and in which, in addition to a work table, we see a wall piano, a divan, various original objects, pieces of art and a collection of cameras and lenses … After a brief introduction of the team that accompanies me, in this case Albert, journalist, and photographer Jordi, we ask permission to start recording. We sit down and begin to discover the story behind the screen.
What is the MGA group?
The MGA group involved in this milestone story is a small group of investors who bet, when Sanifit was in active search for resources in 2013, to follow in my footsteps and venture into the project. I gathered my “fellow travelers”, people around me who believe and invest with me.
With her ego dampened by the passage of time, Marisa is eager to mention, by name and surname, all the architects of the largest biotech sale operation in Spain, not because of the economic volume, which could exceed 1 billion if everything goes well, but because if everything goes well, “many lives will be saved”.
Let’s go back to the beginning of this romance.
One day in August 2013, Guitart met Joan Perelló (CEO) and Carolina Salcedo (CSO) for the first time at a Caixa Capital Risk office in Barcelona, where Jose Antonio Mesa, the then Investment Director, was also present. All entrepreneurs, in order to grow and evolve their project, need to do rounds of financing, and Sanifit was no exception. It had managed to do a series A with Caixa Capital Risk and other business angels, but now it needed to do a larger B. It was at this point that he arrived at Marisa’s table.
We were meeting at Caixa Capital Risk and they explained to me the project of a molecule in preclinical phase, with very good results at that time. They were people who believed in what they were doing, and the results they were obtaining, even at a very early stage, completely fascinated me. I fell in love with both the project and the people. If this molecule reached the market it could save lives, and I think this is spectacular for a person who has worked all her life in life sciences like me. What more could we ask from a project?
Marisa embarked on a journey with an uncertain ending, but she didn’t do it alone. For the crew, she needed reliable people capable of weathering the storm with a cool head. “In cases like this you can’t invest the money you need to live, it’s putting money at risk, it’s like playing roulette. This was betting everything on the red 13: if the ball goes to the red 13, perfect, but if not, you have lost everything.”
He called his FFFs (Family, Fools & Friends), the partners he chose to be part of the MGA group. The first ones? Chemist Santiago Pulido and financier Jaime Nieto. They agreed that Sanifit had possibilities, they trusted in it, and that’s when it all started, we made a participative loan and we enrolled more people and I told them that if they didn’t need the money, they could help this project to move forward. It’s as “simple” as that, if you believe, work and don’t lose confidence and motivation.
At this point in the story it is important to stop for a moment to ask how Sanifit came to knock on Marisa Guitart’s door.
Who is Marisa Guitart Amechazurra?
She started working at Squibb Pharmaceuticals in 1977, at the age of 17. In 1985 she changed company, but not sector. She joined the multinational Pharmacia, where she worked for 10 years, when in 1995 she was offered the position of vice-president of Europe for the company… and she said no. Guitart argues that this position meant she would have to stay in Freiburg (Germany) and she did not feel like it.
A 35-year-old woman had never been offered such a position, but I did not accept. My family was here, I am very family-oriented, although I had no children or steady partner at the time, but my parents, my siblings and my friends were there. And I told them no, that the company car and the cell phone -that vibrated! …things of 1995- were fine, but my next purpose was to go into consulting.
On August 31, 1995, she stopped working for Pharmacia and on September 1 of the same year she was hired as an external consultant. She stayed that way for 12 years until, in 2007, her friend Santiago Pulido convinced her again to rejoin Pharmacia -then Phadia-, with the position she had rejected in 1995: vice-president of Europe. This time she accepted.
For four years we worked to improve the company, and then we sold it to a very large multinational. Then I had to decide whether to stay in that new multinational, I could do it, but I decided to leave. And I went back to consulting for good, and to my madness of helping Spanish companies. I have been here since 2011.
In that start-up in 2013 and the creation of his MGA group to get the necessary funding for the continuity of the project, Guitart tells us that there is also another key name: Jose Antonio Mesa, the Investment Director of Caixa Capital Risk at that time. In order to make the Series B, Mesa moved and found investors such as Health Equity and Somtobir. After two years, phase C was required. It is in that series C when Sanifit gives a blow on the table so that the great venture capitals of the country joined and believed in the project. Guitart is excited to recall that capital injection, the largest for a biotech in Spain at that time: 40 million dollars, about 36 million euros.
This third series was co-led by Ysios Capital, one of the most powerful venture capital firms in Spain, headed by Joel Mairet. Ysios was joined by other European venture capital firms such as Forbion, Gilde and Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners, which is now called Andera Partners. And after that record series C, Sanifit continued to advance, now with much more strength in the sails until a series D, in which more crew members joined, such as Alta Partners and Columbus Venture Partners. And public money also came in from the CDTI (Center for Industrial Technological Development) through the Innvierte program.
At this point, after years of research and investment, we needed even more money to turn the molecule discovered by Joan Perelló and Bernat Isern in a research project at the University of the Balearic Islands into a drug.
We could have made another series, but we had foreseen other ways, such as a takeover bid in Europe or the USA, going public, or a merger or acquisition with another company.
for acquires Sanifit for an upfront payment of 204 million, then there are 170 million in pre-commercial milestones and then a series of commercial milestones that, if they are met, Sanifit investors will be paid on that basis. The time horizon is unknown, the ‘upfront payment’ you know when you will receive it, when the ‘closing’ takes place once we have the approval of the Spanish government and the US antitrust authorities. From here on, we have to continue working to integrate the teams of the two companies.
The road we have traveled in these eight years has not been covered with rose petals, far from it. There have been powerful storms that only a strong and united team has been able to weather safely and safely. Marisa Guitart wants to name that team that, “when one fell down, another one would stand up for him”. There are many people involved both in Europe and in the United States, where a team develops the clinical part, she says.
We have some very good people there, and some people who are no longer there who have played a very important role in getting this company to where it is today: Alex Gold, Claire Padget, Toni Foster; Rekha Garg, Cris Calsada, among others And we continue with excellent people in Spain Toni Jiménez, Marco Moreno and Bernat Isern ; Miguel Ortiz; Carol Salcedo , Firas Bassisi, Marc, Miki, Cristina… And then the finance team with Julià Mesquida, who is a beast… (laughs), Núria Vila our tireless executive assistant . And I would go on, as there have been many other people who have contributed to this success.
When she talks about people, her eyes shine, she increases the passion of the story, she makes it clear that the value of the team is very important for Guitart. When there are operations such as the sale to Vifor, the media spotlight tends to focus on a few people, logically from another party, but behind them there is an army rowing in the same direction.
This is not done by one person alone; it is not done by the CEO alone, nor by venture capitalists alone; this is done with a spectacular team made up of each and every one of the people who make up the team, the external consultants, and the Board of Directors.
The largest sale of a biotech start-up in Spain is a success story – of which there are very few.
Unfortunately, according to Marisa Guitart, “in the biotech field, only one in thousands of projects is successful”. And she reminds us that this is partly due to a lack of financial support. For this reason, Guitart encourages more people like her and her group MGA to make available that amount of money available to push interesting projects like Sanifit, she asks “that they do not stay in a drawer and take the step, of course, in an advised way”.
We ended our interview by talking about culture, the trend. In this country, savings and investments tend to end up in the real estate market or in various financial products; there is hardly any collaboration in R&D or science. Crowdfunding has little success except in exceptional cases. Guitart calls on public institutions, on the one hand, to make existing aid more accessible and visible and, on the other, to increase the budget.
What we have to do is to make the State aware that we have to invest in research and development, and that we have to invest in small projects of Spanish companies that have brutal projects. And I’m not just talking about money, but also about helping professionals like me, for example, who have 40 years of experience and can contribute ideas, support and backing, to get involved in projects like these. For example, there are people with fantastic projects that need someone who knows about strategy, organization or business development…..
We say goodbye. We know that Marisa Guitart is not going to sit at home on the sofa and look at the trophy for the sale of Sanifit with pride. She assures us that she will continue to support Sanifit, and that there will be more. Because there are many projects, some spectacular as she says, and disruptive, brilliant projects that need support, both financial and operational. This milestone in the history of Spanish biotechnology is a good example.
You have to move and take risks. I have supported other companies and I have fallen, with impressive setbacks, but I am still confident in what I do and the MGA group is still alive helping other companies. I still believe in what I believe in, firmly.
