By Louise Bruce Illustration: Ann Malmgren
W
ithin both the recruitment and law sectors, only a few Nordic companies have become life science specialists. This is because customers expect their advisors to have specialist insight into their reality. “Our advice is closely linked to a customer’s product and follows a product throughout its lifetime. Similarly, our customers operate in a strictly regulated market. They therefore expect us to have specialist knowledge of their reality and to have our finger on the pulse,” says Partner and Sector Head of Horten Law Partnership’s Life Sciences and Healthcare Practice Group, Martin Dræbye Gantzhorn.
Specialisation is also a demand in the recruitment industry:
Advisors for business service providers in the life science industry face more than just demand for extensive insight. They also depend on trends in the life science market and the success of individual companies. In the legal sector, this is most clearly visible in the notable fall in the number of transactions in recent years, i.e. company acquisitions and divestments, and consequently in demand for the services that follow in their wake. On the other hand, a certain amount of optimism is being experienced among the law firms with regulatory competences. It has become harder to get products on the market, and similarly more difficult to obtain product subsidies. Meanwhile, the legal sector has experienced an increased trend for licensing rounds, which has put prices under pressure. The view in the recruitment sector is that many patents are expiring and this has played a role in recent years, along with the financial crisis, which largely halted recruitment. Turnover did not begin to increase until 2012. For some recruitment firms, the crisis years clearly left their mark while others coped better.
When recruiting within life science, you must come from the industry yourself or be qualified to understand the mechanisms in the sector. We deal with a very knowledge-intensive industry with very complicated research.
“When recruiting within life science, you must come from the industry yourself or be qualified to understand the mechanisms in the sector. We deal with a very knowledge-intensive industry with very complicated research,” says Kjeld Birch, Managing Partner, SAM Executive Search A/S.
Life science market trends set the agenda
BUSINESS SERVICE PROVIDERS LAW FIRMS
RECRUITMENT SECTOR
• There are 22 law firms specialising in life science in the Nordic region*
• There are about 50 recruitment firms focusing on life science in the Nordic region
• The sector deals mainly with consulting in three areas:
• Recruiting for life science involves mainly the following professions:
Regulatory affairs Research specialists I ntellectual property rights (especially patents and trademarks)
pecialists and managers for production S companies, e.g. engineers and pharmacists
Transactions Source: Who’s Who Legal (www.whoswholegal.com)
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alespeople, marketing talents and people S working in the interface with research (medical marketing) for sales companies