#Roivant

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Vivek Ramaswamy has described himself as an “outsider”, accusing rivals for the Republican presidential nomination of being “bought and paid for” by donors and special interests.

But the 38-year-old Ohio-based venture capitalist, whose sharp-elbowed and angry display stood out in the first Republican debate this week, has his own close ties to influential figures from both sides of the political aisle.

Prominent among such connections are Peter Thiel, the co-founder of tech giants PayPal and Palantir and a rightwing mega-donor, and Leonard Leo, the activist who has marshaled unprecedented sums in his push to stock federal courts with conservative judges.

Ramaswamy is a Yale Law School friend of JD Vance, the author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy who enjoyed success in finance before entering politics. At Yale, Vance and Ramaswamy attended what the New Yorker called an “intimate lunch seminar for select students” that was hosted by Thiel. Last year, backed by Thiel and espousing hard-right Trumpist views, Vance won a US Senate seat in Ohio.

Thiel has since said he has stepped back from political donations. But he has backed Ramaswamy’s business career, supporting what the New Yorker called “a venture helping senior citizens access Medicare” and, last year, backing Strive Asset Management, a fund launched by Ramaswamy to attack environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies among corporate investors. Vance was also a backer.

Ramaswamy’s primary vehicle to success has been Roivant, an investment company focused on the pharmaceuticals industry founded in 2014.

The Roivant advisory board includes figures from both the Republican and Democratic establishments: Kathleen Sebelius, US health secretary under Barack Obama; Tom Daschle of South Dakota, formerly Democratic leader in the US Senate; and Olympia Snowe, formerly a Republican senator from Maine.

Ramaswamy’s links to Leo – recently the recipient of a $1.6BN donation from the industrialist Barre Seid, believed to be the biggest ever such gift, but now reportedly the subject an investigation by the attorney general of Washington DC – are many.

As reported by ProPublica and Documented, Ramaswamy has spoken at retreats staged by Teneo, a group Leo chairs and which aims to connect high-powered conservatives, to “crush liberal dominance” in American life.

Other Teneo speakers have reportedly included Ron DeSantis, the Florida Governor polling ahead of Ramaswamy in the Republican primary, and the former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who trails Ramaswamy and clashed with him on stage in Milwaukee.

ProPublica also linked Thiel to the genesis of the Teneo group. According to a document seen by The Guardian, Ramaswamy became a Teneo member in 2021.

Elsewhere, Ramaswamy is a board member of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a group with ties to Leo, and a member of the Federalist Society, the Leo-driven group which works to stock the courts with conservatives.

Ramaswamy has also spoken to and received an award from the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF), a group of Republican state treasurers.

In June, in South Carolina, the Post and Courier newspaper reported that last year, before launching his presidential bid, Ramaswamy attempted “to leverage his [Republican] connections to gain access [for Strive] to lucrative contracts to manage pension funds … [with] total assets of $39.6BN”.

Similar pushes were mounted in Missouri and Indiana, the paper said. Curtis Loftis, the South Carolina state treasurer, told the Post and Courier there was “nothing improper” about such approaches.

Asked about Ramaswamy’s claims to be an outsider in light of his links to rightwing donors, activists and establishment figures, a campaign spokesperson told The Guardian: “Vivek has lived the American dream and has had tremendous success in business.”

“There’s a colossal difference between someone who has friendships and business relationships with wealthy individuals and politicians who change their policies and positions to please their Super Pac donors,” they added.

In the Wisconsin debate, Ramaswamy flourished in the absence of Donald Trump, the former US president who faces 91 criminal charges but nonetheless leads Republican polling by huge margins.

Amid speculation that Ramaswamy might end up Trump’s running mate, Reed Galen, a Republican operative turned co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, called Ramaswamy “a classic 2020s America tech bro bullshit artist … Trump for the 21st century”.

Ramaswamy’s claim to be an outsider, Galen said, was part of his “fundamental understanding … that MAGA [the pro-Trump Republican base] wants him to show that the rest of these people [in the primary] are politicians. He’s willing to be the showman … the outsider. Anti-establishment. ‘If anything is there, I dislike it because it’s there.’ You know, ‘I’m going to have fun with this. I’m not going to take it seriously because you’re a bunch of hacks and goons.’”

But in another sense, regarding Ramaswamy’s ties to the likes of Leo and Thiel, Galen said: “I think that he’s an insider.”

“He walks into a room with Leonard Leo and says, ‘What do you need me to do?’ … And they’re like, ‘Here’s what we want you to do. Here’s what we need you to do.’ Right?”

“Do I think [Ramaswamy] cares about [issues like restricting] abortion? No, not particularly. I don’t think he has a firmly held belief on it. But if he thinks that it will help him, and in exchange for that Leonard Leo will throw a little chicken feed of the $1.6BN that old man gave him, to help him? Sure, what the hell?”

“He didn’t ever think he’d get this far. So now he’s just gonna push it as far as he can.”

Ramaswamy, Galen said, was closely tied to a world of donors and non-profits in which Leo is “certainly at the center. And this movement only moves in one direction, and it’s toward the darkness. It’s towards authoritarianism. And it’s because it finds people like Ramaswamy. And the more that all these other candidates will now attack him, they will drive him further and further into the arms of those people.”

[vomitdodger]

Someone said it best like this…the commies tried to manchurian a democrat “great uniter”. That person was Obama. A person with an obvious nefarious past and history they needed to hide, change or recreate. The commies are trying the same thing but with a “conservative”. Another manchurian “great uniter”. This time it’s Vivek.

I fell for this initially too. Bye Vivek!

https://x.com/texaswhimsy/status/1708637697026187718?s=46&t=SV43kdZx3tdDLUwMdDuJqg

Link to video comparing his words to Obama. Nearly identical.

[irreplaceable-spark]

A Resurgence of Vision | Vivek Ramaswamy | EP 380

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy discuss his ongoing campaign, the long-growing hunger for depth in political discussion, the dire need for a renewed American vision, and how Vivek plans to strip the Washington administrative agencies of their unconstitutional powers. Vivek Ramaswamy is an entrepreneur, author, and political activist. Vivek has been making headlines since announcing his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election, running on a platform in part to dismantle the expansive and corrupt bureaucracy that has seeped into nearly all facets of American government. Prior to this, Ramaswamy was the founder and CEO of the biopharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences. Leaving in 2021, he published “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam.” In 2022, he co-founded Strive Asset Management with Anson Frericks, which focuses on an alternative to the now-pushed ESG investment framework. That same year Ramaswamy published “Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence.” and has since been deemed one of the “Intellectual Godfathers of the anti-woke movement.”

[female-malice]

Ramaswamy’s push to end climate-conscious investing

Over the years, Ramaswamy has been known for many things: founding a biotech company called Roivant Sciences; becoming a near-billionaire; and performing libertarian-themed rap songs under the stage name "Da Vek."

But recently, he’s become best known as “the right’s most prominent crusader against climate-conscious investing.” His latest mission: ensure Republican-led states pull their money from big investment firms like BlackRock that are trying (or at least claiming) to make more climate-friendly decisions, and reallocate that money to his firm, Strive Asset Management, which explicitly promises not to invest with the climate in mind.

The fossil fuel industry has wanted someone to do this for many years. As we’ve previously reported, the anti-ESG movement—which pushes corporations to reject environmentally and socially conscious investing principles—was originally created by fossil fuel industry operatives to try to delay the renewable energy transition.

The movement fizzled in the early 2000s. But it was revived in 2022, when Ramaswamy launched Strive with the help of billionaire investors Peter Thiel and Bill Ackman, as well as the same fossil fuel industry-connected group that spearheaded the original movement.

Ramaswamy has reported more than $50 million in holdings in Strive, which to date, is mostly a fund to promote fossil fuel development. As Semafor reports, the largest fund at Strive—called DRLL—“ invests in U.S. energy companies and urges them to keep drilling for oil so long as it’s profitable.”

Though Semafor describes DRLL’s holdings as “energy,” the vast majority are fossil fuels. According to Strive’s own description, 93.6 percent of DRLL’s investments are in oil, gas, and pipeline companies. These companies rank among the world’s top climate polluters.

People would not invest in these companies—much less push them to drill as much oil as humanly profitable—if they accepted the science of climate change. They would not invest if they accepted that fossil fuels are causing catastrophic planetary damage. They would not invest if they accepted that this damage cannot be stemmed without rapidly transitioning away from fossil fuels.

That’s why Ramaswamy pushes rejection of the “climate change agenda.” He says it’s because he’s not “bought and paid for.”

The reality is the complete opposite.

Denying the need for fossil fuel reduction is climate denial

Ramaswamy’s style of fossil fuel boosterism, as described by the New Republic, is on the rise in Republican circles. So as we continue to hear it, it’s important to remember two things:

If someone says climate change does not pose a massive threat to human life, economies, and ecosystems, then they are denying the science of climate change.

If someone says climate change can be effectively managed without reducing the use of fossil fuels, then they are denying the science of climate change.

Ramaswamy didn’t flat-out say that climate change is a hoax. But in the debate and in follow-up interviews, Ramaswamy made clear he doesn’t believe climate change poses a massive threat to human life, and doesn’t believe that transitioning away from fossil fuels will help.

This is an opinion he is allowed to have. But it is a rejection of the vast majority of climate science. It should be characterized as such.

[biotech-news-feed]

A Pfizer drug licensed to a Roivant subsidiary surpassed expectations in a type of uveitis, while a stock purchase plan will see Roivant buy out shares owned by Sumitomo Pharma. #BioTech #science

[wikiuntamed]

Top 5 @Wikipedia pages from a year ago: Wednesday, 22nd February 2023

Welcome, chào mừng, mirë se vjen, welkom 🤗 What were the top pages visited on @Wikipedia (22nd February 2023) 🏆🌟🔥?

1️⃣: Ash Wednesday "Ash Wednesday is a holy day of prayer and fasting in many Western Christian denominations. It is preceded by Shrove Tuesday and marks the first day of Lent, the six weeks of penitence before Easter.Ash Wednesday is observed by Catholics, Lutherans, Moravians, Anglicans, United Protestants, as well..."

Image by Oxh973

2️⃣: Vivek Ramaswamy "Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy (; vih-VAYK rah-mə-SWAH-mee; born August 9, 1985) is an American entrepreneur and politician. He founded Roivant Sciences, a pharmaceutical company, in 2014. In February 2023, Ramaswamy declared his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination in the 2024 United States..."

Image licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0? by Gage Skidmore

3️⃣: The Last of Us (TV series) "The Last of Us is an American post-apocalyptic drama television series created by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann for HBO. Based on the video game franchise developed by Naughty Dog, the series is set twenty years into a pandemic caused by a mass fungal infection, which causes its hosts to transform..."

4️⃣: ChatGPT "ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a chatbot developed by OpenAI and launched on November 30, 2022. Based on a large language model, it enables users to refine and steer a conversation towards a desired length, format, style, level of detail, and language. Successive prompts and..."

Image by

Original:

OpenAI

 

Vector:

Zhing Za

5️⃣: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is a 2023 American superhero film based on Marvel Comics featuring the characters Scott Lang / Ant-Man and Hope Pym / Wasp. Produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, it is the sequel to Ant-Man (2015) and Ant-Man and the Wasp..."

[usnewsper-politics]

Pharmaceutical Company Founder's Cancer Treatment in Drug Trials Could Impact Presidential Race #cancertreatments #clinicalresearch #drugtrials #medicalresearch #pharmaceuticalcompanies

[fmarkets]

Roivant Sciences Ltd Reveals Unprecedented Triumph: Unveils Unbelievable Results from Breakthrough Study over Oct-Dec 20232. https://csimarket.com/stocks/news.php?code=ROIV&date=2024-02-13173225&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

GOP Presidential Hopeful Ramaswamy Sued Over Strive’s Practices | Bloomberg

In separate lawsuits, two former employees at the candidate’s Strive Asset Management claim that the anti-ESG investment firm pressured them to violate securities laws.

Vivek Ramaswamy has been rising in presidential polls partly on the strength of his business accomplishments. Before he started running for the Republican nomination, where polling averages now put him in third place behind Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, Ramaswamy founded and ran a drug development company, Roivant, which he took public in 2021. Then he started an asset management firm, Strive, presenting it as a conservative answer to the ESG movement’s focus on investments’ environmental, social and governance impacts. Strive’s motto, meant as a contrast to ESG, is “invest in excellence.”

But two former employees have filed lawsuits in recent months against the investment firm as well as Ramaswamy and his co-founder Anson Frericks that suggest practices at the company were something less than that. They accuse Ramaswamy and Frericks of aggressively pushing employees to violate securities law and of mistreating staff. They also suggest that the company has struggled to meet lofty growth goals for its “anti-ESG” investments.

Christopher Lenzo, a lawyer for plaintiff Joyce Rosely, said the two suits raised questions about Ramaswamy’s seriousness as an asset manager. Strive “was founded, in retrospect, largely as a PR mechanism for the presidential campaign of Ramaswamy,” he said. “Not a lot of thought was given to running it as an investment firm.”

Neither lawsuit has been previously reported. Ramaswamy’s track record will be in focus during next week’s presidential debate, when DeSantis allies have signaled that he plans to concentrate attacks on Ramaswamy. “Strive intends to vigorously defend itself,” the company said in a statement. “Beyond that, it is our policy not to comment on active litigation.” Tricia McLaughlin, Ramaswamy’s communications director, didn’t comment on the lawsuit. She noted that Ramaswamy, who served as Strive’s executive chairman until earlier this year, left Strive when he decided to run for president. “Strive is completely separate from Vivek and his campaign,” she said.

The first suit, filed in Kansas by a regional sales chief who was dismissed as part of a reorganization in March, also says Ramaswamy misrepresented the company’s finances to employees and investors, exaggerating its growth when pitching venture capitalists and recruiting staff. The former employee, John Phillips, claims he was induced to leave a job at JPMorgan that would have paid him more than $1 million in 2022, based on promises made by Ramaswamy and others that Strive was well financed and that Ramaswamy was dedicated to the company.

In reality, according to the suit, Strive was “undercapitalized,” and Ramaswamy was planning a presidential bid. The suit was filed in June, three months after Phillips claims he was fired by Strive without cause. Strive has filed a motion to dismiss the case.

In the second suit, filed Aug. 8 in a Union County, New Jersey, court, Rosely claims she was fired as co-head of institutional sales in retaliation for raising concerns about sexual harassment at the firm and violations of securities laws. She contends she saw a Strive executive make aggressive sexual advances toward a more junior staffer.

When Rosely, a veteran of State Street and Goldman Sachs, complained to Frericks, Strive’s president, he told Rosely it was “none of his business,” according to her complaint. At the time, Frericks, a former beer distribution executive who went to high school with Ramaswamy, held the company’s most senior position.

Like Phillips, Rosely claims that Ramaswamy and Frericks pressured her to violate securities laws. She says she was asked to use sales materials that improperly promised future returns and urged to allow employees who were not yet registered to sell securities to pitch clients. Rosely also claims she complained about Ramaswamy’s social media posts, which she believed constituted unlawful securities sales.

Both Phillips and Roseley were fired in March, alongside another executive who Rosely says was also complaining about the securities law violations. She claims that Strive told her the firing was part of a reorganization but also that everyone who was dismissed as part of the reorganization was over 40 years old. Her suit alleges that she was the victim of age discrimination, as well as retaliation for raising concerns about harassment and securities law violations.

In April, a month after the dismissals, Matt Cole, Strive’s chief investment officer, was named chief executive officer. In a June memo, Cole acknowledged the departures of “underperforming members of the distribution team.” He also signaled that Strive, which manages exchange traded funds (or ETFs) with about $1 billion in total assets as of Aug. 17, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, would tone down its political rhetoric and focus on promoting “shareholder capitalism” instead of criticizing ESG. The memo, first reported by Semafor, said that growth in the firm’s funds had slowed in 2023 in part because investors had seen the firm as “political over investment oriented.” The memo said growth had resumed and would accelerate in a “‘hockey stick’ fashion” starting in 2025.

[infosnack]

Todays biotech news roundup in under 800 words

Today’s biotech news roundup, in under 800 words https://www.statnews.com/2023/11/28/biotech-news-insulin-pbm-lawsuit-argenx-roivant-avidity-biosciences-novocure/?utm_campaign=rss Want to stay on top of the science and politics driving biotech today? Sign up to get our biotech newsletter in your inbox. Today, we talk lots about clinical trial inconsistencies: How Canada’s trial reporting is not up to snuff, and how companies perpetually want to spin results to make their experimental medicine look more favorable. We also talk about how the ARIA stemming from Alzheimer’s drugs isn’t taken seriously enough, and how state and local governments are suing insulin makers over drug prices. Read the rest… via STAT Health - Science, medicine and healthcare news https://www.statnews.com/category/health/ November 28, 2023 at 10:18AM

[irreplaceable-spark]

Jordan Peterson Interviews Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy | EP 341

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and Vivek Ramaswamy discuss ESG investing, the culture wars, the upcoming US presidential election, and Vivek’s recently announced candidacy. 

Vivek is an American business leader and New York Times bestselling author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” along with his second book, “Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence.” 

Born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, he often recounts the sage advice from his father: “If you’re going to stand out, then you might as well be outstanding.” This set the course for his life: a nationally ranked tennis player, and the valedictorian of his high school, St. Xavier. He went on to graduate summa cum laude in Biology from Harvard and received his J.D. from Yale Law School while working at a hedge fund, then started a biotech company, Roivant Sciences, where he oversaw the development of five drugs that went on to become FDA-approved. 

In 2022, he founded Strive, an Ohio-based asset management firm that directly competes with asset managers like BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, and others, who use the money of everyday citizens to advance environmental and social agendas that many citizens and capital owners disagree with.

[blogynewsz]

"Stunning $5 Billion Biotech Triumph in Under a Year: Unveiling the Unbelievable!"

Pfizer’s executives cannot be solely blamed for Roche’s $7 billion acquisition of a bowel-disease treatment that was previously owned by Pfizer. The deal, which can be compared to a biotech version of “Moneyball,” has raised eyebrows and drawn attention to the overlooked potential within big pharma companies. Roivant recently announced the sale of an asset that it acquired free of charge from…

[biotech-news-feed]

Roche will gain the rights to develop, manufacture and commercialise RVT-3101 in the US and Japan for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease and potentially multiple other diseasesRVT-3101 is a Phase 3-ready antibody with first-in-class and bes #BioTech #science

[casuallysuperbnut]

Roche to Buy Bowel-Disease Drug From Roivant, Pfizer for More Than $7 Billion

http://dlvr.it/Sxqj8T

[blogynews]

"Discover the Latest Health Care Buzz: A Fascinating Roundup and Insider Insights!"

Barclays Capital analysts have suggested that Roche Holding’s recent acquisition of Telavant from Roivant Sciences and Pfizer could be a positive step towards improving market sentiment in the Health Care sector. However, they also emphasize the need for internal progress within Roche in order to further boost investor confidence. According to the analysts, investors had been anticipating a deal…