Financing drug discovery via dynamic leverage
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Lo_Financing drug discovery.pdf
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Author(s)
Frishkopf, John J.
Montazerhodjat, Vahid
Lo, Andrew W
Date Issued
December 2015
Journal
Drug Discovery Today
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
Montazerhodjat, Vahid; Frishkopf, John J. and Lo, Andrew W. “Financing Drug Discovery via Dynamic Leverage.” Drug Discovery Today 21, no. 3 (March 2016): 410–414. © 2015 The Authors
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We extend the megafund concept for funding drug discovery to enable dynamic leverage in which the portfolio of candidate therapeutic assets is predominantly financed initially by equity, and debt is introduced gradually as assets mature and begin generating cash flows. Leverage is adjusted so as to maintain an approximately constant level of default risk throughout the life of the fund. Numerical simulations show that applying dynamic leverage to a small portfolio of orphan drug candidates can boost the return on equity almost twofold compared with securitization with a static capital structure. Dynamic leverage can also add significant value to comparable all-equity-financed portfolios, enhancing the return on equity without jeopardizing debt performance or increasing risk to equity investors.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
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DOI of Published Version
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drudis.2015.12.004
