Hedge Fund Manager Who Bet on Botox Turns to Rival
- Shares in Korea’s Daewoong Pharmaceutical have doubled in 2017
- Crossover expects company to win approval to sell in the U.S.
Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg
This article is for subscribers only.
Navroze Alphonse bet on Botox before the wrinkle treatment became a blockbuster drug for Allergan Plc. Now, the hedge-fund manager is bullish on a potential competitor.
The wager is on Daewoong Pharmaceutical Co. entering the lucrative U.S. market, for which the company and a partner filed an application in May after completing clinical trials. Daewoong’s Botox rival, Nabota, was first sold at home in South Korea in 2014 and is now available in about 60 countries. Daewoong expects it will take at least a year to win U.S. approval and a symbolic step came last month, when Nabota was assigned a formal name in the U.S.