On January 12-15, JP Morgan held its 33rd Annual Healthcare Conference (the “JP Morgan Conference”) in San Francisco, California. The JP Morgan Conference is held during the same time every year in the same place and is widely touted as the go-to life science event, which has spawned a series of follow on life science events and numerous meetings throughout the city. For example, the Annual BioTech Showcase (now in its 7th year) is held concurrently and described as an “investor and partnering conference devoted to providing private and public biotechnology and life sciences companies with an opportunity to present to, and meet with, investors and pharmaceutical executives in one place during the course of one of the industry’s largest annual healthcare investor conferences [JP Morgan].” Perhaps because the event has become a predicable phenomenon, the JP Morgan Conference also draws flocks of members from the life science and its investment community who do not attend the JP Morgan Conference to network in one relatively central location. San Francisco swells and benefits from the annual event by fully-booked hotels charging premium rates at six or more times their normal rack rate and its associated commerce.
New this year to the JP Morgan scene was Life Science Nation’s (LSN’s) Redefining Early State Investments (RESI), which formerly was a Cambridge/Boston-centric event, taking advantage of the strong life sciences community. RESI is an:
[O]ngoing conference series that will be establishing a global circuit for early stage life sciences companies to source investors, create relationships, and eventually, get funding. These events will give early stage life science companies the chance to start, resume or close conversations with relevant investors, creating a global dialogue to bring products to market at a faster pace.
McGuireWoods has been a sponsor and attendee of RESI since RESI 2 (the most recent event was RESI 4), and the latest RESI delivered much of the same great networking with emerging growth companies in the life science space and investors. Like the former RESIs, the one-on-one partnering meetings were central, as were the workshop presentations focusing on investing in emerging growth life science companies. A number of the RESI attendees, moreover, were concurrent JP Morgan Healthcare Conference attendees, which helped to increase attendance. Where the next RESI will be is yet to be determined.
JP Morgan featured company presentations and breakout Q&A sessions from both big pharma and medical technology companies, emerging growth and not-for-profit companies, as well as keynote presentations and industry panels. Keynote presentations included Jamie Dimon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, JPMorgan & Chase Company (“JPMorgan Chase”); Ezekiel “Zeke” J. Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., Professor and Chair, The Wharton School and Perelman School of Medicine at The University of Pennsylvania; Former White House Special Advisor on Health Policy; Dr. Condolezza Rice, 66th Secretary of State of the United States. Panel discussions included discussions on digital health companies, next generation sequencing, and a look at diagnostic and laboratory testing.
On the first day, the registration lines were hectic, as was navigating around the hotel. Ten thousand-plus individuals attend the JP Morgan Conference, which is held at the St. Francis Westin, creating huge lines and bottle necks in between presentations. In the kick-off lunch presentation, Dimon reflected on his own health and the health of the life science community, and JPMorgan and Chase. Dimon was recently diagnosed and treated for throat cancer, where he said that he was a “beneficiary of the dynamic health sector.” He said that he learned “it takes a village” to treat an individual’s disease. In terms of the world economy, Dimon reported that Japan is changing and getting better, China continues to grow at a high rate, which may be hard to maintain, Europe is experiencing sub-optimal growth due to the changes to maintain a common economic policy, and the U.S. is doing well with capital markets open and credit to where it was before the great recession. Dimon said that the U.S. government is getting better at managing the annual budget process by not shutting down or sequestering the budget. Dimon thinks that majority of capital expenditures driven by the top 1,000 companies help to drive small business development, which is good for the economy overall. Dimon observed that lower oil prices have hurt Russia, which is experiencing an uncertain direction, and while India’s growth has been hampered by its bureaucratic structure keeping growth back, its new leadership looks promising. On top of all of this, JPMorgan and Chase is gaining shares in every business and has managed to never lose money during any quarter of the economic crisis. Dimon noted.
Finally, reflecting on what he has learned by leading JP Morgan and Chase, Dimon said that he thinks a great leader is not about charisma, public speaking, or a great memory. He thinks great leaders create an open environment for people to speak their minds, particularly its senior executives. Dimon thought that company leaders need to meet with their customers and exhibit a good model for work ethic, focusing on fortitude.
But what drives the JP Morgan Conference are the company presentations. Many of the companies appeared to have made business decisions toward the end of last year with an eye to their upcoming JP Morgan Conference presentations in the form of favorable company milestones, acquisitions, and forecasts. While most of the public company presentations will soon be posted, if not already, most of the lessons many attendees hoped to learn came from what was said or not said in the presentations—reading between the lines. In the end, a lot of the JP Morgan Conference is about networking, including the get togethers that followed each day’s orchestrated calendar of events—a grand networking event it was.
