Mario Gobbo - Director

Mario Gobbo has 35 years of banking and corporate finance experience in healthcare and energy. His expertise encompasses venture capital and private equity as well as investment banking and strategic advisory services. He serves on the Supervisory Board of Cinkarna Celje, a fine chemicals company from Slovenia. He is on the board of Zavarovalnica Triglav, the largest Slovene insurance company spearheading healthcare insurance in Central Europe and was Chairman of the Board and Chair of the Audit Committee of Helix BioPharma, a Toronto-listed biotech company developing interesting novel complex biomolecules to combat various cancers.  As an executive director, he was also on the board of Lazard Brothers, London.

While Managing Director for Health Care Capital Markets and Advisory with Natixis Bleichroeder in New York, from 2006 to 2009, he secured transactions for the bank’s M&A and equity capital markets pharmaceuticals and life sciences group. He obtained mandates for several IPOs and follow-on transactions on NASDAQ, as well as advisory assignments for health care and medical devices companies. When with the International Finance Corporation, a World Bank Group institution dealing with private sector investments, the team he led completed several highly successful equity and loan investments in biotech and generic pharmaceutical companies and funds in India, Latin America, China and Central Europe. From 1993 to 2001, he was with Lazard in London, where he created and managed their Central and Eastern European operations, including Turkey. Mr. Gobbo advised on M&A, fundraising and privatization efforts for several key firms in the region, including transactions for the pharmaceutical companies Pliva, Bosnalijek, Lek and Krka and investments in the APDC Biotech fund, now renamed VentureEast, one of the first Indian life sciences funds, and BVCF, a highly successful and innovative healthcare fund in China.  Prior to Lazard, he worked with Swiss Bank Corporation International Ltd. in London, where he worked on the IPO of Ares Serono, the Swiss biotech company, subsequently sold to Merck KgaA.  He was also on the investment committee of AHF, an India focused health care fund, Ocimum Biosolutions/Genelogic, an Indian contract research organization, and CellPraxis, a US/Brazilian stem cell research, privately owned firm.

Mario Gobbo holds a Bachelor of Arts in Organic Chemistry from Harvard College, a Master of Science in Biochemistry from the University of Colorado and an MBA, a Master of Business Economics and a PhD (Management) from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.