Date:29th June 2011
Location:
The Abchurch Offices; 125 Old Broad Street
Attended by:
A selection of the life science City Financiers in London, a selection of the VC community and a contingent of the life science media, together with a number of young and exciting companies.
The Event:
With the Abchurch Life Sciences Team growing from strength to strength it only seemed appropriate to open our doors to the Life Science community for an evening of champagne and canapés, and give the newest member of our team, Jamie Hooper, the opportunity to meet and mingle with others in the industry.
In our series of themed events, this was our first Life Science party and it must go down as another great Abchurch success. We had a fantastic turnout of guests, all with a keen interest in the sector, either as analysts, journalists, corporate financiers or company Board members. We were delighted to have Nigel Brooksby, former Chairman of Sanofi-Aventis and current Chairman of the UK Life Sciences Council, give a short talk to kick start the evening, giving guests plenty of food for thought. One interesting, though controversial, point Nigel raised was that biotech “thinks pharma is slow and bureaucratic”, while Pharma “thinks they already know everything”. Quite how this will be addressed as Pharma and biotech need to work more closely in the future is still to find out. He was certainly opinionated – as an experienced industry specialist should be – and a great champion of UK biotech.
Abchurch’s Creative team rose to the occasion and the inspirational ideas really added that touch of genius to the evening. With waiters wearing purple Abchurch branded scrubs and a menu including gazpacho served in brightly coloured test tubes, seared beef in kidney trays, health and science was most definitely the theme. My personal favourite, the crème de la crème of the evening was a selection of jellies served for desert imaginatively presented in Petri dishes. With raspberry & rose, elderflower & gooseberry and lime & lemongrass flavours, exactly what they were supposed to look like, we won’t mention here – suffice to say they were realistic!
Many commented that it was refreshingly different to other events they had attended and it made for a thoroughly enjoyable and useful networking evening. I am looking forward to what creative surprises we can expect with a Green Gathering on the cards for October. The bar has certainly been raised.
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