Chris Piggott Associates

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Chris Piggott Associates
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Chris Piggott has over 30 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry, building strong global commercial experience onto a solid scientific foundation.   His key skills and achievements include: 

  • A successful track record of negotiating and closing in- and out-licensing partnerships and establishing, developing and maintaining a wide range of other types of collaboration.

  • Leading negotiations and executing deals with large, medium and small companies and with European, American and Asian partners, with an excellent understanding of these different business cultures.

  • Establishing business development strategies in a number of therapeutic areas and identifying, evaluating and progressing licensing and M&A opportunities in line with these strategies.

  • Establishing and developing a corporate business intelligence function in support of business development activities.

  • Broad international sales and marketing experience.

  • A fluent French speaker.

Career

 

Chris has a pharmacology degree from Cambridge University and a Marketing Diploma. Following a period as a medical representative in the UK for May & Baker, he embarked on an international commercial career with Marion Merrell Dow and Hoechst Marion Roussel - predecessor companies of the sanofi-aventis group.

 

 In 1998, Chris moved to the US to take up a global business development position  with Aventis;  in 2002 he moved again, this time to France , while retaining similar responsibilities.

During this period Chris managed Aventis’ licensing activities with companies based in Japan and Korea while also supporting at different times the company’s respiratory, anti-infective, Alzheimer’s Disease research groups, and leading a team working in the oncology field. 

 

Amongst other things, Chris negotiated and executed licence, co-development and co-promotion agreements with Altana Pharma (now Nycomed) for ciclesonide and secured rights to Coley Pharmaceuticals’ CpG oligonucleotides in the respiratory field in the framework of licence and research agreements. He also led the negotiation which led to the licensing of a Japanese Alzheimer’s Disease treatment and completed four development and license agreements on innovative formulations of a blockbuster drug as part of its life-cycle management strategy.

 

With the establishment of sanofi-aventis in 2006, Chris set up and led a business intelligence group dedicated to supporting corporate development activities. This group participated in the identification and evaluation of many opportunities.

Case studies

 

The issue

  • a mid-sized North American specialty pharmaceutical company wanted to appoint a new licensee for its marketed product in one of the major European markets

The solution

  • approaches to companies having sales forces active with appropriate target physicians and expertise in the particular therapeutic area yielded a short list from which the company was able to select and negotiate licensing terms

 

The issue

  • a European biotech company needed to license its lead product to a large pharma company for development and commercialization

The solution

  • a review of the therapeutic interests and licensing strategies of the pharma majors yielded a list of potential partners, who were contacted to establish their interest in the opportunity. After a selection of these had conducted scientific evaluations, the biotech was able to initiate licensing discussions.