BB Biotech Veteran Unexpectedly Departs

Swiss investment company BB Biotech has to cope with a personnel setback. After more than 20 years of service, the company's Chief Investment Officer is leaving at the end of the year.

After 20 years in investment management and leading the department since 2010, Daniel Koller will leave the Swiss investment company BB Biotech at the end of 2024, according to a statement released on Friday. The Board of Directors and Koller aim to ensure an orderly transition by the end of 2024, the statement further revealed.

Koller is considered a veteran of the company. Before joining BB Biotech in 2004, he worked for Cytos, UBS Warburg, and Equity4life.

Chritian Koch 555

Christian Koch (pictured above), one of the two deputy heads of the investment management team and a portfolio manager at Bellevue Asset Management (BAM) since 2014, is set to take over the leadership of the department at the beginning of 2025. The Board of Directors is confident that Koch possesses the excellent skills required to shape the «next phase of development» for BB Biotech in a complex market environment.

Koch has been a portfolio manager at Bellevue Asset Management since 2014. From 2013 to 2014, he was a sell-side pharma and biotech equity analyst at Bank am Bellevue in Küsnacht, and from 2010 to 2013, he was a research associate at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at ETH Zurich. He holds a doctorate in Chemoinformatics & Computational Drug Design from ETH Zurich and a master's degree in Bioinformatics from Goethe University Frankfurt.

Loss in the Second Quarter of 2024

Regarding the financial markets' development in the first six months of the current year, the healthcare sector, in which BB Biotech operates, lagged in investor favor in the second quarter of 2024. BB Biotech's stock lost 12,0 percent in value in francs and 11,3 percent in euros.

The net loss amounted to 87 million francs in the second quarter, compared to a loss of 13 million Swiss francs in the same period last year. Despite this, the company reported a profit of 173 million francs for the first half of 2024, compared to a loss of 267 million francs in the same period last year, as the company further announced on Friday.