Biotech Veteran Has Great Year

Chidem Kurdas
Specialist funds often remain under institutional investors’ radar. That seemed to be the case with Perceptive Life Sciences funds, but recent performance has drawn attention from major allocators.

Biotech-healthcare specialist Joseph Edelman made spectacular returns in the early years after founding Perceptive Advisors in 1999—for instance returning 155% in 2000. But like many he ran into trouble in 2008, losing 24% and quite a few customers. Assets shrank, returns recovered but were not remotely as high as earlier.

Two years ago, he had around $400 million under management and told AR magazine he was content to be in a small niche and had no desire to run billions of dollars. He reportedly said Perceptive could conceivably expand to $800 million.

Well, that has already come to pass. Two Perceptive funds made over 80% in the past 12 months (through July). This year to date they returned 47%. Assets are at $865 million.

One big investor that favors Mr. Edelman is the hedge fund investment arm of UBS, which put money into a Perceptive fund in early 2013. So far, that investment has paid off handsomely.

Prior to starting his own firm, Mr. Edelman was a biotech analyst at Prudential Securities and Paramount Capital. He came to be known as a contrarian short seller, though Perceptive appears to have lots of long positions.

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Tags: Biotechnology, healthcare, Joseph Edelman, Perceptive Advisors