25+ years in deal-making
25+ deals closed
5 continents
Present your project and let us discuss it openly, under confidentiality agreement if needed.
Send an email →Nothing is transmitted or stored. Twenty questions to assess the case for selling the company or divesting an asset, how attractive it would look to a buyer, and your readiness to proceed.
Start the quiz →Nothing is transmitted or stored. Early out-licensing may delay your need to raise funds. Fifteen questions to assess the feasibility of your asset(s).
Start the quiz →The right structure depends on what you need.
Fee-based mission
You have a target i.e. out-license your asset, find a manufacturing partner, build the inorganic growth plan… we agree on the objectives, the deliverables and the timeline, and I run it.
Basis: daily rate. Typical length: three to twelve months.
Success-fee project
A company, a business unit, a site, a product line: I manage it from strategy through to closing. I have led both sides of such transactions, for GSK and as Okapi Consult, in Asia and Europe.
Basis: no retainer, milestones and success fee weighted to the outcome.
Senior advisor & Non-Executive Director
A recurring seat at the table rather than a one-off project: challenging the inorganic growth plan, reviewing deals before they are signed, and bringing a network built over three decades.
Basis: hourly for advisory; annual mandate for board seat.
Most engagements start with a conversation about what you are actually willing to achieve. That conversation is free.
Write to Bernard →Expertise is the ground I have walked: the industries, products and situations I know from the inside.
Competence is what I have built on that ground: the deals that I structure, draft, negotiate and close.
The industries and situations I know from the inside.
The transaction types I structure, value and negotiate.
Types of intervention
What the company should buy, sell, license or partner, and in what order.
Mapping the universe of counterparties, then opening the conversations that matter.
Team, procedures, governance, timetable: what a transaction needs to progress and succeed.
Technical, clinical and financial assessment, on either side of the table.
Structure, value, risk sharing and the financial model that makes the case defensible.
Terms drafted to hold, negotiated in the room, then signed and handed over.
Package the asset, map the licensees, manage the competitive bidding.
Equity story, investor mapping and the deal terms that keep a round financeable.
Sectors
Beyond healthcare, the same deal-making applies to sectors I follow with real interest: alternative energy, environmental protection and biodiversity.
Not sure which of these your situation calls for? That is usually the first thing we work out together, and it costs nothing.
Write to Bernard →Mergers and acquisitions of sites and entities, licenses granted and acquired, joint ventures, technology transfers, strategic alliances, divestitures of products.
Led, negotiated and closed in Asia, Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa.
| Type of deal | Country |
|---|---|
| Out-license and co-development | Japan |
| Commercial JV & license agreement | Japan |
| Out-license & development partnership | Japan |
| Co-development & in-license agreement | Japan |
| Entity divestment (Nanjing) | China |
| Site divestment (Shenzhen) | China |
| Biopharmaceutical entity divestment (Zhejiang) | China |
| Collaboration & out-license agreement | Korea |
| Co-development & in-license agreement | Korea |
| Vaccines entity divestment | India |
| JV and co-development | India |
| Malaria vaccine product transfer | India |
| Strategic alliance | Turkey |
| Strategic alliance & out-license | Russia |
| Strategic alliance & out-license | Saudi Arabia |
| Collaboration & license agreement | Canada |
| Co-development & collaboration agreement | United States |
| BARDA CIADM, Centre for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing | United States |
| Technology transfer | Egypt |
| Fixed asset divestment | Germany |
| Strategic alliance & out-license | Brazil |
| Strategic alliance, co-development & out-license | Brazil |
Showing all 22 transactions
Counterparty names stay off this page: the type of deal and the country tell you what the work was, the rest belongs in a conversation.
Any of these will tell you more over a call than it does in a table. The career behind them has its own page: Career & CV.
Write to Bernard →
Professional experience
Biopharma senior advisor to Belgian and international companies. Corporate business development: strategic partnerships, technology transfer, in- and out-licensing, acquisitions, mergers and divestitures of products, sites and entities.
The health cluster of Wallonia, part-time.
Reporting to the Vaccines executive team. Leading global business development operations across commercial and manufacturing domains, managing a team of directors based in Belgium, Italy, and the United States. Established a new strategy for international collaborations; reshaped the industrial and commercial footprint in Asia through an international M&A task force; secured a sustainable and affordable supply of malaria vaccine with an Indian blue chip; concluded development deals for COVID-19 pandemic vaccines; wound up the commercial joint venture in Japan and the R&D joint venture in Singapore.
Defined and implemented strategic partnerships and joint ventures that supported growth through commercial leverage and expanded development and manufacturing capabilities. Built partnerships in the US and Japan for local pandemic flu vaccine production and a commercial joint venture in Japan and established a partnership network across Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Korea, Turkey, Malaysia, Brazil, Canada, and Russia.
Supplied to GSK affiliates as well as supranational and non-governmental organizations, including UNICEF, GAVI, and MSF. Reorganized the worldwide customer services department post-SAP, created the management dashboard, and transformed the transportation strategy and logistics network.
Managed manufacturing planning and inventory for the worldwide GSK Vaccines industrial network. Initiated mid- and long-term manufacturing strategic planning, set up the Sales & Operations Planning process, and developed an optimizer tool that increased production capacity by more than 10%.
Long-term international consultancy missions for Exxon, GE, Arcelor, Warner-Lambert (Pfizer) and Nestlé.
Collaborate with SME companies to support the development of their business, leveraging my experience with top-tier companies and my multicultural network to create business opportunities and secure the right deals.
Education
Executive training
Languages
Hover a quarter, or tap it, to turn it over.
Turn over
The globe
Deals closed in Japan, China, Korea, India, Turkey, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Brazil, Canada, the United States, and Germany. No visits, but real deals negotiated, signed, and implemented. What these projects have in common is not a template; it is the ability to understand what is actually being said.
Turn over
The three figures
A transaction team is simultaneously legal, technical, clinical, financial, and industrial, and is usually spread across continents. Designing that team, giving it governance, and keeping it moving toward a closing date is a distinct skill from negotiating the deal, and it is where most transactions are won or lost.
Turn over
The contract
Expertise and creativity in drafting terms and conditions, the clauses that determine what a deal is worth long after the handshake. I use AI professionally to produce and stress-test drafts, shortening the loop with counsel and leaving more time for the questions that require judgment.
Turn over
The chart and the cross
Pharmacist from UCLouvain, MBA from Louvain School of Management, corporate finance at IE Madrid. That combination means the valuation model and the development plan are reviewed by the same person, so the assumptions in one are tested against the reality of the other.
The company
The purpose of Okapi Consult is to support companies in the biopharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors in corporate business development, including the search for and establishment of strategic partnerships, technology transfers, in- and out-licensing agreements, and acquisitions, mergers, and disposals of products, sites, and entities.
Client missions are found through Bernard's network in the Walloon ecosystem, as well as his European and international network, the same networks that then identify partners for his clients.
In figures
If those four quarters describe the help you are looking for, the next step is a conversation.
Write to Bernard →Posts
Occasional writing on partnering, divestitures and the biopharma deal market, first published on LinkedIn, collected here.
Placeholder post
The strategic case is usually the easy half. The hard half is whether you could hand the asset over on Monday.
Placeholder post
Not the science. The CMC package, the freedom to operate and the shape of the team behind it.
Placeholder post
Twenty years of deals in Japan, China, Korea and India, and the clauses that turned out to matter.
Useful links
The organisations I actually work with: the Belgian ecosystem, the public instruments that fund development, the global health funders, the regulators, and the meetings where deals start. Maintained by me alone; there is no submission form.
Wallonia & Belgium
Agencies & export
Public funding
Global health funders
Regulators & references
Partnering & conferences
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