Mergers & Acquisitions names the 2021 Rising Stars of Private Equity, including GTCR’s Luke Marker.
Tenacious Team Captain
The year’s challenges touched many sectors, and medical devices were no exception. GTCR principal Marker adapted to shifting market dynamics at the dealmaking and portfolio company level. When Covid forced procedures to move to ambulatory surgery centers, Marker reoriented Corza Medical’s strategy to focus on that market.
Big Deal
His mastery of life sciences has a strategic as well as a financial impact, especially given the relative dearth of industry specialists in private equity. Marker was an early champion of Maravai Life Science’s work in mRNA and novel gene therapies, paving the way to GTCR’s sponsorship of the company. Maravai went public last year in a $1.9 billion debut, the second largest financial sponsor healthcare listing of the year.
“He shines with his ability to synthesize complex scientific jargon or novel therapeutic applications down to digestible layperson takeaways, themes, and underlying trends for GTCR to make informed investment decisions on,” GTCR managing director Dean Mihas told Mergers & Acquisitions.
Conquering Complexity
Negotiating one medical supplies acquisition during a global pandemic? Tough. Now add a second target to the mix, a complex carveout from Takeda Pharmaceuticals, and structure the acquisition simultaneously so your fund can merge them and invest in the resulting newco. That kind of complexity requires relationships, resourcefulness and expertise.
“This trust and confidence was evident with the Corza Medical deal, as the Surgical Specialties CEO Dan Croteau trusted in Luke that GTCR was the best partner in his efforts of pursuing a complex global carve-out acquisition and merger,” Mihas explained. “After conducting diligence on two businesses at the same time, Luke secured the confidence of all parties necessary to make the merger combination with TachoSil happen.”
The backdrop of this exercise in multitasking was unprecedented uncertainty about what normalized earnings would look like after the pandemic subsided.
Remember that mRNA life sciences company Marker helped shepherd through to an IPO? The company’s chemical process to make mRNA vaccines had a hand in battling the pandemic.
“During 2020, CleanCap became critical to the successful scale-up of manufacturing capacity for mRNA vaccines and therapeutics, including the Pfizer/BioNTech and CureVac Covid-19 vaccines,” Marker reported.
