Burrill, a San Francisco-based firm specialising in life sciences, has announced the promotions of Tiba Aynechi to director, merchant banking, Garrett Vygantas to director, venture capi
Burrill, a San Francisco-based firm specialising in life sciences, has announced the promotions of Tiba Aynechi to director, merchant banking, Garrett Vygantas to director, venture capital, and Neel Patel to senior associate, merchant banking.
Aynechi (pictured) joined Burrill Merchant Banking in 2006 following an internship in the venture group. Previously, Aynechi was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, developing computational models for drug discovery.
Before joining Burrill in 2006, Vygantas was with Genentech’s Market Planning Group where he focused on the commercialization and launch of Lucentis for the treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration. He is a co-founder and interim chief executive of NewBridge Pharmaceuticals and serves on its board of directors. He is a board observer of Nora Therapeutics, Proventys, Ikano Therapeutics, ProteoGenix, and NanoVasc.
Patel has broad advisory experience across life sciences coupled with functional experience in post-merger integration, turnaround management, operations and strategic planning. He was a management consultant with A.T. Kearney where he focused on strategy and operations consulting. He also worked in business development at Roche Diagnostics.
‘Our merchant banking and venture capital practices continue to perform very well despite the difficult economic climate that we are currently facing. The promotions are reflective of the excellent contributions that these three individuals have made,’ says G. Steven Burrill, chief executive of Burrill.
