By Padraic Halpin
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish life sciences investment firm Malin (I:MLCM) completed its initial series of asset purchases with two more investments on Monday and said director and former Elan boss Kelly Martin would take over as chief executive.
Malin was set up this year by executives from former Irish drugmaker Elan and raised 330 million euros (241 billion pounds) in one of Europe's biggest biotechnology initial public offerings (IPO) to invest in smaller, unlisted firms.
After spending the proceeds ahead of schedule, Malin said CEO Adrian Howd, a former equity analyst with a doctorate in molecular neuroscience, would assume the new role of Chief Investment Officer to concentrate on the clinical progression of the assets.
"Into the next phase, it's all about the assets. We stepped back and looked at how we can help progress those assets," Malin Chairman John Given, who will also take on some executive functions, told Reuters.
"We have a world class scientist and analyst in Adrian who is in a unique position to do that and we also have an operational CEO effectively on the bench, Kelly Martin."
Martin, a former Merrill Lynch banker who took over at Elan in the midst of an accounting scandal in 2003 before cleaning it up and selling it to Perrigo (N:PRGO) for $8.6 billion (5.5 billion pounds) a decade later, will take over the day-to-day operations of the company.
Two sources told Reuters on Sunday that Martin was set to be appointed to the role.
Malin made the announcement after detailing its final main investments, including a minimum of $15 million (9.5 million pounds), or up to $20 million (12.7 million pounds) depending on a number of factors, committed to North Carolina-based Hatteras Venture Partners (HVP).
Malin said the deal would allow it to extend its network without building out its own infrastructure by leveraging HVP's expertise in early stage discovery science, medical device and diagnostics.
It also committed up to $1 million in New York-based Jaan Health, a privately held healthcare mobile technology company.