ARTICLE SUMMARY:
With a new fund providing a significant pool of capital from which to draw in making investments, Gilde is doubling down on a longstanding geographic agnosticism as it looks to build on a transatlantic approach that has characterized its investment strategy for the past couple of decades and stands in contrast to the way many if not most medtech investors think.
The outsized role that US-based companies have played in the evolution of the current global medical device industry is all the more striking given the critical role that European physicians and companies have played in development and advancement of the technologies and procedures that are at the heart of the industry. A case in point: interventional cardiology, pioneered by Andreas Gruützig, MD, nearly 50 years ago, but quickly brought forward by a host of US entrepreneurs and investors. Yet despite this duality, there has long been a sharp split between the two geographies when it comes to the investment dollars that have driven medtech innovation, with US investors and European investors largely favoring investment opportunities close to home. Now, one prominent European medtech investor, Netherlands-based Gilde, is aggressively shifting away from the geographic biases that have informed investment strategies of the past.
