4
Feeding the Beast
LORENCE KIM IS A SON OF KOREAN IMMIGRANTS WHO GREW up in Pittsburgh, went to Harvard, and studied biochemistry in the lab of Tim Springer, the future Moderna investor. He went on to medical school at Penn and, along with an MD, tacked on a Wharton MBA, which proved valuable when investment bank Goldman Sachs recruited him. Instead of practicing medicine, Kim went to work orchestrating deals for biotech companies. One of his biggest deals was the sale of Maryland biotech MedImmune to AstraZeneca (AZ) for $15 billion in 2007—at the time one of the biggest ever for a US biotech company.
In 2013, Kim was trying to close another deal between AZ and a small drug company called Omthera, but right in the middle of negotiations, AstraZeneca’s ...
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