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(Bloomberg) –
The stock rally sparked by the promising results of Pfizer Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine trial has boosted the fortunes of many investors, but none as dramatically as two German brothers.
Andreas and Thomas Struengmann have collectively added about $ 8 billion to their wealth this year through their stake in BioNTech SE, the German company that is developing the vaccine with Pfizer. BioNTech’s U.S. certificates of deposit jumped this week after the U.S. drug giant reported that the vaccine it was working on had prevented 90 percent of symptomatic infections in tens of thousands of volunteers.
At $ 22 billion, the twins have one of the biggest health fortunes in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The brothers, 70, formed their empire by reinvesting the proceeds of their family’s generic drug businesses.
They “reshaped their fortunes by simply believing in science,” said Paul Westall, co-founder of family office recruiting firm Agreus Group.
The Struengmanns did not respond to requests for comment.
Athos service
The brothers created their family office, Athos Service, shortly after Novartis AG announced in 2005 that it was buying their drug maker, Hexal, as well as their stake in subsidiary EON Labs for a total of 5.7 billion. euros ($ 6.7 billion).
Thomas Struengmann said in a December interview with German newspaper Handelsblatt that the brothers initially vowed not to invest more than € 1 billion in the biotech sector because of the risks and patience involved. They ended up going over that cap after seeing glimpses of promises.
“You want to see your little plants keep growing,” he says.
Their bet on BioNTech embodies their ambition to finance transformational drugs. They helped give the company 150 million euros of seed capital in 2008 and now own about half of the company. His stock rally took BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin’s fortune to more than $ 4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Index, putting him on the verge of joining the richest 500 people in the world.
The Struengmanns also backed Sahin’s previous company, Ganymed Pharmaceuticals AG, a cancer treatment company that the Turkish-born scientist founded with his wife Ozlem Tureci. Just under a year after the couple turned to Covid-19, the results of the preliminary trial are validation of the new type of drug they have spent their careers researching.
“It could open up the pharmaceutical field to a new class of molecules,” Sahin said in an interview on Monday.
‘Big elephants’
After taking over the family-owned pharmaceutical company Durachemie from their father Ernst in 1979, the brothers sold it seven years later and used the product to create Hexal. They started with around two dozen employees in an apartment building near Munich and made it the fourth largest generic drug company in the world.
“Our strength is speed and flexibility,” Thomas, a PhD in business administration, said in an interview in 2004. “While the big elephants make their decisions, we have already acted.”
BioNTech’s initial public offering in the United States last year ended a busy decade for the brothers.
Since 2010, they have co-invested with EQT AB in a hearing aid business of Siemens AG, sold to German lender Suedwestbank AG for more than double what they paid in 2004, and acquired stakes in numerous companies from biotechnology, including Immatics NV, which recently merged with Arya Sciences Acquisition Corp.
Not all of their bets have paid off.
Immatics’ share price has fallen by about a third since it went public on Nasdaq in July, while 4SC AG, a German cancer drugs company in which the Struengmanns are majority shareholders, is down more a fifth this year. BioNTech got off to a rocky start, pricing its IPO below its target range, although its shares have since jumped 580%.
“For us, it’s not primarily about feedback,” Thomas said in the Handelsblatt interview. It is “above all about generating highly effective medical innovations”.
(Updates with Sahin company details in 10th paragraph)
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