(Carmen Segovia) 

Building the Critical Mass

Nothing warms Guilherme Emrich’s heart like his annual trip to the BIO convention. “I go every year, and Brazil’s presence keeps growing,” he says. “A few years ago Biobrás was our only company in attendance. Last year, if I am not mistaken, we had 60. It gives me a real sense of accomplishment.”

Emrich, Bill to his friends, has spent 35 years developing Brazil’s biotech sector and is recognized as playing a central part in many of the country’s achievements. His involvement began in 1976. “A friend of mine, Marcos Mares Guia, invited me to become involved. Marcos was a highly respected scientist who had returned from the States with a plan to start a company.” Emrich was an ideal partner, because he had business training from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Columbia Business School in the U.S. and INSEAD in France, as well as start-up experience. An engineer by training, he set up his first company in 1969 and launched a series of firms in computer services and technology.

Almost immediately, Emrich sensed that the company, Biobrás, could be pivotal for his career and for the growth of biotech in Brazil. “I talked to people, absorbing the research and the potential for developing it. It seemed like the right time to get into this new sector where Brazil was showing promise. For funding,” he chuckles, “we called on the three F’s: family, friends and fools. ‘The 3Fs equation’ we called it.”

Under Emrich’s leadership, Biobrás grew rapidly. In 1980, it went public and raised money on the market. The stock became the top-performing investment ever made by Brazil’s National Economic Development Bank, and it was regularly in the top five on the São Paulo Stock Exchange’s BOVESPA index. By 2001, Biobrás employed almost 600 people, was the world’s fourth largest producer of insulin and had developed and patented a novel process for producing recombinant human insulin. A controlling stake in the company was sold to Novo Nordisk, a competitor, for $31.4 million in 2002.

At that point, Emrich confesses, he had grown a bit tired of being chairman and CEO. “So I decided to continue to be involved in technology-based companies not as a CEO but as an investor,” he says. Accordingly, he cofounded FIR Capital Partners in 1999, and helped launch the first fund for technology-based companies, Fundotec, in 2001. “We have a network of regional funds that operate in different parts of the country, we have national funds and we are part of a global network of fund managers worldwide that controls $6 billion of investment in some 500 companies,” he explains.

Besides providing equity, FIR Capital Partners “gets involved in the real management of the companies, in their strategy,” says Emrich. “In Brazil, as everywhere, technology-based companies tend to be launched by people with good science knowledge but lacking the business view and experience. That’s what I try to put together. My input can be invaluable in avoiding mistakes. Or at least,” he laughs, “in avoiding making the same mistake twice.”

Emrich has worn several other hats in the service of Brazilian biotechnology. For example, he has served on the National Council of Science and Technology and is chairman of the board of directors of Biomm Technology, a company that makes products used in creating biofuels. And he was chairman and one of the forces behind the development of Fundação Biominas, a thriving biotechnology cluster in Emrich’s hometown of Belo Horizonte.

Looking ahead, Emrich sees a prosperous future for Brazilian biotech. “I am quite convinced that biotech will continue to grow in Brazil and that in fact it has some special advantages as a location,” he says. “Global pharma has a presence too, but until the last two or three years it was not on their radar as a potential source of R&D. They are now more aware of the opportunity.” He concludes, “Overall, I am very optimistic, much more so today than I was ten years ago.”