Family offices tend to be exemplars of patient capital and well suited to invest in areas such as medicines, healthcare and biotechnology. 

Family offices in France and Canada have partnered to invest in a set of commercial, clinical, and pre-clinical pharmaceutical firms, aiming to buy into a sector where valuations have been hit by rising interest rates, this news service can reveal.

The Paris-based Gouttman family’s investment office, called Standard - run by Thomas Gouttman - along with the Schneider family, and another Canadian investor have teamed up to go after these opportunities, Family Wealth Report has learned. 

The families’ new vehicle will manage $200 million of assets, and have a global mandate. The vehicle will be domiciled in the US, but mainly run from Paris and Geneva. It is closed to outside investors.

The move marks a change for the families, who first formed their partnership in 2019 to enter the hard-hit energy sector. Thomas Gouttman and his partners used the disrupted conditions of the pandemic to buy shares in oil and natural gas producers operating in Western Canada. Some of these bets have returned up to six times their investment since then, this publication understands. 

"Their favorite playground is where there's financial disclocation. They're industry-agnostic, valuation-focused and totally opportunity-driven," according to a banker who is acquainted with the families. "They care about keeping a low profile and are quite unusual in their approach, in the sense that they handle all the investing process entirely by themselves, without intermediaries."

Standard, which has offices in Paris and Lyon, declined to comment.

The involvement of family offices in biotech and pharmaceutical sectors is well established. Family offices tend to be exemplars of patient capital with the long-term horizons that are required to invest in the biotech, medical and healthcare sectors where returns can take years to develop.