Jacob Gottlieb, a well-known leader and investment expert in the field of healthcare and pharmaceuticals, is off and running with his latest investment venture, a hedge fund known as Altium Capital. Gottlieb is a native New Yorker who completed a BA in Economics at Brown University, and went on to earn an Medical Doctorate at New York University Medical School. Interestingly, with his formidable academic and personal credentials, Gottlieb went to work on Wall Street as an investor and manager.
Lessons Learned from Past Endeavors
By the late 1990s, after several years of successful business ventures, Gottlieb joined Merlin BioMed Group. At the height of the biotechnology revolution, along with his fellow portfolio managers at Merlin, he assisted the company in accomplishing over 100% returns in 1999 and 2000. By generating large returns, Merlin was able to secure prominent clients that included endowments, major pension funds, family offices, and private individuals with a high net worth, all of which provided experience and network connections for Gottlieb. When Merlin closed its doors in 2007 after returning funds to investors, the company boasted a successful track record of consistent growth.
After his years of success at Merlin and careful studies of successful business models in the investment sector, Gottlieb founded Visium Asset Management in 2005, and successfully grew its initial investment from $300 million to a whopping $2.5 Billion in two years’ time. Visium grew to be an $8 billion hedge fund after surviving the 2008 economic crisis, with some 200 employees, and headquarters in New York, San Francisco, and London. Gottlieb served as CIO of Visium from 2005 to 2016, when the hedge fund closed after an insider trading and mismarking scandal provoked by a couple of rogue company employees. Cleared of any involvement in the Visium scandal, Gottlieb maintained his position as the company’s CEO and took charge of winding down the hedge fund. Then he took the experience acquired at Visium as he went on to develop his next project: Altium Capital.
Altium Capital, Gottlieb’s new health care investment fund, is founded with the goal of advancing therapies to treat various diseases and conditions, such as Diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and Cancer. Gottlieb is also involved in a number of nationwide philanthropic projects that support research and innovations and in health care.
Altium Capital Opens to Outside Investors
Altium is a hedge fund designed to take capital from outside investors. It is an investment firm with an eye for attractive business models that is honing in on growth companies, particularly in the growing health care sector, which continues to make innovative and exciting advances and progress. Altium Capital focuses on seeking out new ideas, innovative developments, and cutting-edge technologies capable of transforming industry and financial sectors, and the most successful companies leading those efforts. According to Gottlieb, “Inverting, working backward from the future to invest in companies in the present is one way to find opportunities.”
Altium Backs Oramed Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Gottlieb’s well-earned track record of successful health-care investments at Visium led to Altium’s investment in Oramed Pharmaceuticals, Inc. by means of a registered direct offering made in combination with various other healthcare-focused investment firms. Founded in 2006, Oramed Pharmaceuticals is known for its proprietary technology that has transformed the administration of medical treatments by developing an oral insulin capsule that replaces insulin injections. This is the first capsule of its kind, as this form of oral deliver was previously impossible because of the impossibility of insulin to remain viable after ingestion.
Oramed’s innovative flagship product promises to transform the lives of millions of patients managing diabetes, as well as those who receive protein-based medical therapies. This oral delivery breakthrough promises industry advantages that extend far beyond the obvious benefit of patient comfort and convenience, as it also translates into reduced rates of infection and subsequently lower treatment costs.
While Oramed’s insulin capsule is still pending FDA approval in the US, the company’s growth is encouraging. Oramed’s flagship insulin capsule has earned global attention, and the potential of this powerful new technological development to further the field of injectable pharmaceuticals is indeed promising.
Meanwhile Chinese investors already welcomed Oramed’s new and innovative development. The Chinese investment firm Wuzhou Zhongheng Group supported Oramed by investing $52 million in a 10% stake in 2015. Since that investment, Oramed has out-licensed its oral insulin capsule to Hefei Tianhui Incubator of Technologies in a $50 million agreement that also extends to Hong Kong and Macau.
Using his method of “working backward from the future to the present,” Gottlieb decided to invest in Oramed because the potential of their innovative development in oral insulin delivery promises to revolutionize and transform the pharmaceutical industry.
The Future of Altium Capital
The goal of Altium Capital is to identify and invest in promising growth companies, and to build a dynamic and seasoned investment team. To this end, the company seeks out top investment talent, in deference to Gottlieb’s belief that “high quality people” are what make a company great. To this end, Altium Capital has recently hired Miles Hammond, with a professional history that includes successful positions with Barclays/Lehman Brothers, Glen Hill Capital and Unicom Capital, as well as Undergraduate and Masters degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Wharton. Hammond brings over 10 years of investment experience to Altium Capital, joining several other professionals with expertise in biotechnology, pharma, and health care more broadly.
Altium Capital is poised for growth with quality hires and foundational expertise as well as the hard lessons learned in previous decades through Visium and other investment firms. Gottlieb is committed to having Altium Capital as an entity reflect his own values of growing all professionals at the company, professionally and personally. Altium Capital supports its own growth by adhering to community values and a commitment to overcoming adversity through investments in innovative technologies and sharp up-and-coming companies with winning business models.
