Fresenius Ventures’ managing director: Europe has the investors. It needs the capital. - European Biotechnology Magazine

Thomas Thestrup, managing director of Fresenius Ventures, writes in the Autumn issue of European Biotechnology that Europe's healthcare innovation is increasingly being captured by investors and acquirers outside the region. Following Fresenius's July launch of a €200 million healthcare venture fund, Thestrup argues that the medicines and devices shaping European healthcare over the next decade are mostly being invented by small or yet-to-exist companies, and that established companies must be connected to innovation they do not own. He cites data showing that 65% of new drugs approved for the world's 20 largest pharmaceutical companies between 2015 and 2021 were sourced through licensing or acquisition.

Thestrup contends that Europe's problem is not a shortage of innovation but of capital to retain it. The region's share of global pharmaceutical R&D investment has declined from 41% at the start of the century to roughly 31%. He notes that in 2025, U.S. stock exchanges took an estimated 98% of global biotech IPO capital, and that mid-sized European drugmakers spent the year acquiring American biotechs rather than being acquired.

He argues that European capability is not the constraint. Novartis, Roche, Sanofi, Boehringer Ingelheim and Novo have run venture arms for decades, and two of the three most active corporate investors behind the roughly 70% of biopharma companies that went public since 2022 are European. Europe has an estimated 820 active corporate venture capital units compared with roughly 1,030 in North America. The gap lies in deployment: U.S. venture funds manage close to six times the capital of European counterparts and invest around six times as much each year. Many mid-sized pharmaceutical, medtech and diagnostics companies remain on the sidelines, and care providers across the continent have little to no venture capability, he says.

Thestrup makes the case for early minority stakes as the least costly and most informed way to understand a technology before acquisition, and as a two-way exchange in which industrial parents provide medical, regulatory and operational expertise along with clinical and academic networks. He describes corporate investors as patient capital not constrained by traditional fund cycles. Fresenius Ventures, which he describes as a fund of more than €200 million investing in growth fields adjacent to (bio)pharma, medtech and care provision, was created to pursue this opportunity. Thestrup concludes that European corporates should not wait for policy frameworks to mature before backing the next generation of healthcare companies.