Spurred by Biotech's Rapid Growth, Banking Giant Taps First-Ever Boston Staffer to Focus on Supercluster

January 28, 2015
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor

Wells Fargo is doubling down on the Boston biotech scene, naming its first-ever Boston based biotech banker to the area’s life sciences community, as big banks rush to get in on one of history’s strongest bull markets for the sector.

Wells Fargo said late Tuesday that it has named Katherine Andersen as the third banker in its brand new Technology Banking office at 101 Federal St in Boston, but the only one who will focus exclusively on life sciences. Andersen, a former director of the bank’s capital finance unit, told the Boston Business Journal that she was particularly excited about the position after attending the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco earlier this month.

"Coming out of the J.P. Morgan (Health Care) Conference, there was a lot of optimism," she said. "Hearing all this optimism from the industry and investors, I think there are a lot of good things still to come."

Andersen will need that excitement to fully cover the enormity of Boston’s “supercluster” status as a hub for biotech and life sciences innovation unmatched anywhere in the world, said the bank.

“As the world’s largest life sciences cluster, Boston is rich with opportunities to serve middle-market companies throughout this diverse sector,” said Greg O’Brien, regional vice president for commercial banking in New England for Wells Fargo. “The cluster’s growth engine is fueled by a huge pipeline of venture capital plus state and federal funding from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center and the National Institutes of Health.

Andersen will not only keep an eye on the state’s 738 biotech and pharma companies, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, she will also keep close relationships with the area’s historically strong academic institutions (including Harvard and MIT), medical centers, research labs, and numerous incubators.

It’s a challenge she said Tuesday that she is ready to meet head on, particularly since the way Wells Fargo had been approaching the biotech community hasn’t always been the most effective.

"We've been trying to cover it from afar, but given our relationship-based model, it didn't work," she told the paper.

Andersen began her career with GE Capital before joining Merrill Lynch Global Markets and Investment Banking in New York. She moved to Boston in 2006, where she joined Wells Fargo Capital Finance, and holds a bachelor’s degree in finance and economics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

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