By Carl O'Donnell
Sept 5 (Reuters) - Credit Suisse Group AG has
brought on three new senior investment bankers as it continues
to build out its healthcare investment banking division,
according to an internal memo reviewed by Reuters.
The three managing directors, Andrew Singer, Lorenzo
Paoletti and Liav Abraham, will join Credit Suisse this fall,
the memo said.
The hires bulk up Credit Suisse's life sciences banking team
at a time when mergers and acquisition activity in the sector is
at a record high for the year to date, according to Refinitiv
data.
So far this year, there has been nearly $300 million in
life sciences mergers and acquisition activity, including
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co's $90 billion acquisition of
Celgene Corp, Abbvie Inc's $63 billion deal
for Allergan Plc, and Mylan Nv's merger with
Pfizer Inc's established drugs business.
Singer, who will be based in San Francisco, is joining
Credit Suisse as a managing director. He was previously at Wells
Fargo & Co. He has 20 years of investment banking
experience including at Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and
Robertson Stephens. He also worked at Blackstone Group Inc
and Epizyme Inc, a biotechnology company where
he was chief financial officer.
Paoletti is coming to Credit Suisse from RBC to work as a
managing director focused on the biopharmaceutical sector. He
will be based in New York. Prior to RBC, he worked in Barclays
Plc's healthcare investment banking group.
Abraham, who will also be a managing director based in New
York, was previously at Citigroup Inc, where she was an
equity research analyst covering specialty pharmaceuticals and
co-head of the U.S. healthcare equity research team.
So far this year, Credit Suisse has worked on transactions
for Bayer AG and Merck & Co Inc as well as
capital raises for companies including Intercept Pharmaceuticals
, Ascendis Pharma A/S and Cortexyme Inc
.
(Reporting by Carl O'Donnell
Editing by Tom Brown)