Fifteen percent of biotech deals took half the capital in 2025. A senior banker explains who got it and why. Jan De Kerpel runs life sciencesand healthcare investment banking at Van Lanschot Kempen. Before that he was a scientist, working on an HIV drug that is still saving lives today. He moved from the lab to the trading floor by accident, and he has stayed there for twodecades because, he says, very few seats let you sit with twenty companies at once and watch which patterns repeat. This conversation is about the patterns. In 2025, fifteen percent of biotech transactions absorbed fifty percent of the capital raised. The money is there, De Kerpel says, but it is floating toward a small number of names. Tubulis raised four hundred millioneuros at the end of last year, the largest private biotech raise in Europe, and was then acquired by Gilead. Agomab, the first European biotech IPO on NASDAQ in roughly five years, started life as an antibody spin-out from Argenx and pivoted to small molecules along the way. These are the companies that get the room. The other eighty-five percent are operating in a different market and most of them do not know it. De Kerpel is direct about what separates them. Diversified investor bases over concentrated ones. Boldness invision paired with brutal realism on valuation. Founding CEOs who recognize when the company has outgrown them and step into the chair role before they are pushed. "An excellent project with a mediocre team is a recipe forfailure," he says. And on the romantic idea of family money funding clinical trials: "In our business, philanthropy is not a good idea." He also calls out the geography of success. Munich, Leiden, Flanders, Copenhagen, Switzerland, increasinglyFrance. Not because the science is better there but because companies in those clusters can fail in front of each other and learn faster. The companies that get acquired are usually acquired by partners they have known for years. TheIPOs that land are usually relationships started before lockdown. Opportunity, De Kerpel says, does not arrive in a sharp suit. It arrives with mud on the boots, and only the founders who knew what they were looking for in the first place will recognize it. We also talk about: Why 15% of biotech deals took half the capital in 2025How Tubulis raised €400 million and got acquired byGileadWhy founding CEOs rarely become commercial-stage CEOsWhat investors actually look for besides the science GUEST Jan De Kerpel, Head of CorporateFinance/ECM and Managing Director Life Sciences & Healthcare at VanLanschot Kempen. A scientist by training with a PhD in quantum chemistry fromthe University of Lund, he spent eight years in pharmaceutical R&D atTibotec and Devgen before moving to KBC Securities as senior biotech/pharmaequity analyst, and then to Van Lanschot Kempen in 2016. Based in Brussels. LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-de-kerpel-a48a2a/ Van Lanschot Kempen:https://www.vanlanschotkempen.com ABOUT WILLING TO WIN Willing to Win — Biotech LeadersAgainst All Odds is a long-form podcast featuring biotech founders, CEOs and Chairpersons who have built companies through real adversity: failed trials, board fights, near-bankruptcy, regulatory setbacks, personal cost. Not thehighlight reel. The willingness. ABOUT THE HOST Christian Rados is a biotech executive headhunter since 2011 and founder of Rados Recruiting, a boutiqueexecutive search firm based in Munich. Rados Recruiting places CEOs, CFOs, CSOs, CBOs and Chief Medical Officers for venture-backed and listed biotechcompanies across Europe and the United States, permanent, interim and fractional mandates. Website:https://rados-recruiting.com LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianrados-biotechdreamteams/ Book a call:https://calendly.com/radosrecruiting/lets-build-a-dreamteam Watch on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@willingtowinpodcast
