Swisscom and Prexton awarded at Global Corporate Venturing Summit

Over the past four years, the Global Corporate Venturing & Innovation (GCVI) Summit has grown to include over 800 business leaders from the corporate venturing and innovation professionals ecosystem. The GCVI Summit provides CVCs, corporate strategy executives, C-level innovation officers and corporate development executives with ways to maximize innovation strategy business practices and drive strategic investment opportunities.

One part of the event is the award ceremony of the GCV awards which took place on Wednesday evening. During the ceremony Swisscom’s Digital Transformation Fund was named Fund of the Year.

The Digital Transformation Fund  – worth CHF 200 million – was announced half a year ago. With the fund Swisscom Ventures switched to external investors. Swisscom has provided CHF 50m, sourcing the rest from institutional investors. More than half of the financing comes from Swiss pension funds. Since the start, the fund made five investments.

Prexton Therapeutics won in the category "M&A of the year". Prexton Therapeutics has been acquired by Lundbeck for up to CHF900 million in March 2018. With the acquisition Lundbeck added foliglurax, an innovative treatment for patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease, to its pipeline. Prexton, founded 2012 in Geneva, was the first spin-off company resulting from Merck Serono’s Entrepreneur Partnership Program launched in April 2012. The program was aimed at reducing the impact on employment following closure of the Geneva headquarters due to the restructuring. MS Ventures, the strategic, corporate venture arm of the biopharmaceutical division of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, participated in several of Prexton’s financing rounds.