SHS Dealflow: Interview with Dr Cornelius Maas
Dr Cornelius Maas is responsible for the so-called deal flow at SHS. One of his main tasks is to find suitable companies in which SHS would like to invest. Fundraising for the SHS VI fund is running very successfully and is almost complete. Time for a few questions for Dr Maas:
Dr Maas, what criteria does a healthcare company have to fulfil to be potentially interesting for SHS?
Dr Cornelius Maas: The common denominator of all our investments is growth. Accordingly, we are primarily on the lookout for companies with an exciting product or service portfolio that would like to take growth steps together with an industry-experienced investor like SHS at their side.
What are the possible reasons for an investment by SHS?
In addition to company successions, where we, as industry specialists, understand the language of healthcare entrepreneurs, classic growth financing, including for a company’s major projects such as M&A, are occasions for an investment by SHS. Growth companies often contact us to drive their expansion together with us and our network, which has grown over 25 years.
Can you briefly explain with one or two examples what successful participation (from start to exit) at SHS looks like?
Our investment in the medium-sized endoscope manufacturer Blazejewski MEDI-TECH, in which we acquired a stake at the beginning of 2020 in order to jointly initiate further expansion topics and product portfolio extensions, serves as a good example. In the process, we as SHS entered the company with a minority position and have now recently, after the strategy was successfully implemented, finally jointly sold the company to the ERBE Group. Another example is the Swiss company evitria, a so-called CDMO in the field of antibodies, where we solved the succession of the company together with a private equity investor friend in the form that the founder initially sold only a part of his shares to us, in order to then finally carry the company into a structured exit process together with us after another very successful growth phase. We were then able to sell evitria very successfully for all parties in 2021.
Without naming names: are you already in talks with companies that could then become the first portfolio companies of the new fund?
We are currently in due diligence with an exciting growth company from Switzerland. In addition, we are currently reviewing several corporate successions of medium-sized companies where we are at different stages of the transaction process.
Thank you for the interview.