Back Bay Group’s founder, president & managing director, Ali Malihi entered the financial services industry in 1980 and joined Paine Webber in Boston in early 1981. Paine Webber had a major forte in biotech in the 80’s and 90’s under the leadership of Stephen Evans-Freke from 1980 through 1985 and subsequently Stelios Papadopoulos PhD, who created many opportunities for on and off-balance sheet financings for the biotech and pharma companies. All the top leaders in biotech and biopharma (Genentech, Amgen, Biogen, Centocor, Genzyme, Alkermes, Repligen and hundreds more were investment banking clients of Paine Webber some on the buy[1]side and some on the sell-side. This became a major focus in Ali’s Special Situation portfolio management and sector analysis. This interest and passion for biotech, biopharma and healthcare sector at large continues to date. Back Bay Group was formed in late 1997 under Ali’s leadership with a sub-focus on the life sciences, biopharma R&D space and healthcare at large. Several portfolio companies where Back Bay Group invested as principal and/or advised from 1998 through present have been either Boston-based life sciences, healthcare services, imaging or SaaS based clinical research platforms companies. Examples are Exact Sciences (NASDAQ symbol: “EXAS”), Amicas (later became MERGE Healthcare and ultimately purchased by IBM-Watson) and others. Other life sciences entities were instrumentation companies or biomolecular interaction R&D technologies such as Silicon Kinetics of San Diego, CA with the goal of bringing its affinity capture mass spectrometry (ACMS) unique capabilities to Boston.

Back Bay Group Network and Partners:

The Back Bay Group Boston Initiative seeks to bring awareness to all biotech, biopharma and healthcare firms to be cognizant of the fact that ecosystems such as Boston could have a major impact on their growth both via direct factors as well as positive externalities. Our group, network of strategic partners and platform at large have detailed information on trends, vectors of scientific collaboration and venture capital, private equity, government funding, universities and hospitals ecosystems, databases and biobanks, NIH and CDC funding; Boston’s friendly and collaborative business environment could be the wind behind companies’ sail in this space. We monitor the global ecosystems as the landscape for biotechnology and biopharma companies continues to undergo change. We deploy think-tanks and business intelligence platform and have a network of experts with drug development intelligence. Our teams are continuously monitoring drugs in the development pipeline, from the lab to the market. Our network partners have developed an AI/ML platform which monitors and analyzes trends and historical timelines, while identifying past successes and failures with reliable historical data and visual trends, creating decision support dashboard for development trends by therapeutic areas, mechanisms, origins, targets and many more areas of innovation, change and IP acquisition. These changes include IP and patent portfolios, price pressure, outcomes-based applications and reimbursement, vectors that challenge sales and R&D productivity, treatment pathways, and precision health and personalized medicine attributes. Back Bay Group and its strategic partners and affiliates support international as well as U.S. based entities that seek to bring their beachhead or their R&D operations to Boston. We work with large, mid-size, and small pharma and biotech companies adding vision, insight and a path to navigate all aspects of scientific, clinical, financial, go-to-market and business strategy.

The Network Effect:
How we support our biotech and pharma clients through partners: We work with established and emerging high-growth clients who are disrupters and operate at the cutting edge of innovation as well as those who want to collaborate with leading platforms, biopharma firms, as well as top academic centers of excellence and R&D leaders centered in Massachusetts. As patents, knowhow and IP are so critical to this sector, we work with such clients to help cultivate, grow and defend an established IP portfolio. Our strategic partners also include top biopharma and biotech research and consulting firms, investment banking firms**, 3rd party valuation experts specialized in all aspects of growth from early stage to inflection points whether it is an exit or full growth journey. Through our expert partners we offer asset identification and screening, benchmarking and competitive intelligence, branding, market landscaping and product optimization, business and corporate development, licensing due diligence and non-dilutive funding (e.g. NIH/ SBIR Fast Track and others). Furthermore, for entities targeting a presence in Boston, Massachusetts or New England, we work with specialized REITs, real estate developers and leasing agents for related office, R&D and lab space. Finally for our clients the information and optimized use of industry events, investment conferences, biotech and biopharma event sponsors are critically important. We can facilitate such business intelligence as a service. To offer an integrated suite of services to our clients requires an experienced team with hybrid business, financial, scientific and real estate/relocation backgrounds and between Back Bay Group and its strategic partners**, we have aggregated such skills customized for each client.

ESG-focused & Data-centric:

ESG (Environment, Social Governance):
Companies in healthcare and life sciences are more than ever ESG-conscious, however this nascent arena requires expertise to adhere and comply with regulations or the appropriate criteria. Our ESG teams can assist companies define, strategize, measure, compile and analyze and finally report to various constituency all aspects of ESG, from carbon footprint to processing and waste management to social and governance attributes of their operation and management. As more companies are required to address ESG issues, we advise our clients on environment, social and governance acceptable best practices.

Data-Centric and Digital Transformation:
Through digitalization, tokenization, automation and predictive analysis via AI/ML dashboards we are seeking to bring a higher level of efficiency, efficacy and compliance to our client base. We work and collaborate with partners who have a unique offering in this area.

Emerging Markets (e.g. Middle East Region):
Our strategies and value-added services encompass cross-border investment opportunities in the creation of services and cash flow businesses and projects and other opportunities leveraging our portfolio companies’ domain expertise.

We act as a bridge:  Certain technologies or processes are conducive to cross border technology transfer, education, training and job creation.

We assist US entities to establish presence in the Middle East and develop a strategy for partnership with strategic players or capital sources. In some cases, we also initiate entity formation, assembling the best talent from the U.S. and Europe and deploying best Regional talent to customize platforms for the Middle-East.

We adhere to socially responsible investing criteria and guidelines.