Advent Adds Health Care Partner

On the heels of closing the firm’s first dedicated health-care focused fund, Advent International hired William Mills as a partner in its Boston office.

Most recently one of four general partners with The Venture Capital Fund of New England, Mills will be one of two partners investing Advent’s $100 million Healthcare & Life Sciences II LP, which was launched last January (PEW Jan. 18, p. 1). In addition to his work on that fund, Mills will support any additional Advent health-care efforts.

“Borne of experience, my belief is an influential medical investor needs to be able to take meaningful roles in leading companies,” Mills said. “[To do that] one needs access to a scale of capital like that at Advent.”

Mills’ particular focus within health-care will skew toward medical devices and biopharmaceuticals. Within medical devices Mills said he focuses on those that are regulated by the Food & Drug Administration.

“In terms of deal type, we will have a bias toward early-stage deals, but will go across the whole spectrum to include public companies,” Mills said.

Since closing this fall, the fund has made one investment, committing $7 million of an approximately $20 million private round in publicly held Ilex Oncology, in which Advent already held a stake. This deal fell within the expected perameters of the fund, which Mills said were $4 million to $8 million per company with the sweet spot falling at $6 million to $7 million.

Mills said he had been the sole partner focused on health-care deals at VCFNE, where he was responsible for pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device investments.

“I could look with a broad brush at VCFNE, and I restrict myself to what interests me,” Mills said.

Harry Healer, a partner at VCFNE, said the firm would not continue health-care investing following Mill’s departure. He said the firm, which is in pre-marketing on its next fund, would now focus its investment activities solely on the information and manufacturing technology industries.

“We would have pursued health-care as long as he stayed here,” Healer said. “He was kind of a lone ranger [in health-care] until this probe came, which is a great opportunity for him.”

Prior to VCFNE, Mills spent seven years with PaineWebber Ventures/Ampersand Ventures as a managing general partner concentrating on early-stage technology investments.