Novartis International AG

Vasant Narasimhan, CEO since 2018 and a trained physician, works with Chief Scientific Officer Fiona Marshall and CFO Harry Kirsch on major pipeline and acquisition decisions. The board approves large transactions, but day-to-day R&D capital allocation flows through the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research and the oncology development unit under Jeff Legos.

Novartis has shifted to a 'buy and build' model, investing heavily in external collaboration alongside internal research. The Cambridge, Massachusetts research hub scouts deals across U.S. biotech hubs, while the Basel headquarters leverages long-standing European academic partnerships. The 2018 purchases of Advanced Accelerator Applications and Endocyte created its radioligand platform, exemplifying its preference for acquiring specific technology platforms over broad pipelines.

Novartis is a publicly traded Swiss pharmaceutical corporation, not a family office or investment firm. It deploys capital internally toward R&D and business development, not third-party investments. The Altss profile covers Novartis because institutional allocators sometimes evaluate it as a peer to large active-investing pools, but its capital is entirely corporate operating capital.

Under Narasimhan, the firm has retreated from primary care medicines, ophthalmology, and consumer health entirely through its divestitures of Alcon and its consumer joint venture with GSK. It does not have a meaningful presence in vaccines, rare disease outside of gene therapy, or women's health. The current focus is exclusively on patented, specialty pharmaceutical markets.

Sandoz was the generics and biosimilars division of Novartis until its spin-off in September 2023. The two entities now have no ownership link, with Sandoz trading independently on the SIX Swiss Exchange. The separation was designed to allow Novartis to concentrate on higher-margin branded innovative medicines.

As a publicly traded company, Novartis generates capital from pharmaceutical sales revenue — Cosentyx, Entresto, and Kisqali are among its highest-grossing products — and from debt issuance. Its 2024 annual report disclosed over $9 billion in R&D spending. The firm does not manage any external investor capital; all allocation is from retained earnings and borrowings.

Novartis pursues both models but has recently favored outright acquisitions of small to mid-sized biotech platforms over traditional in-licensing deals. The 2018 Endocyte and AAA deals were cash purchases. In November 2024 it announced the acquisition of Kate Therapeutics, a gene therapy company, reinforcing its commitment to buying specific capabilities rather than leasing them through license agreements.