Challenger joins rush to biotechnology
Challenger International is looking to join Colonial First State in the hot managed investments market of biotechnology with the intention to raise up to $40 million through the soon-to-be listed BioTech Capital.
Challenger International is looking to join Colonial First State in the hot managed investments market of biotechnology with the intention to raise up to $40 million through the soon-to-be listed BioTech Capital.
BioTech Capital will invest in Australian biotechnology focusing an areas such as genomics, proteomics, medical devices bioinformatics and enabling technologies.
"To date this type of investment has generally only been available to high net worth and institu-tional investors," says BioTech Capital director Harry Karelis.
"While there are other biotech pooled funds, with BioTech Capital, investors can now participate in these investments at the very low entry level of $2,000 in a totally liquid investment."
Challenger says investors will also enjoy the tax advantages that pooled development funds at-tract, with no capital gains tax on share price appreciation, wile Australian investors would re-ceive tax-free dividends or full-franked dividends.
"The aim of BioTech Capital is to maximise wealth creation through investment in entities which exhibit the potential for exceptional performance and value growth with an achievable exit strat-egy for the benefit of all shareholders in the company."
The investments of BioTech will be handled by Challenger subsidiary Challenger BioTech Man-agement. Challenger will draw on advice by Foursight Associates whose principals include Sir Gustav Nossal, Professor David Pennington and Graham Mitchell.
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