Robert Duggan was interviewing hedge fund investors and Wayne Rothbaum’s name cropped up. Duggan and his bunch of research buddies were on a fund-raising trip in New York to pitch for Pharmacyclics. Phrmacyclics is a biotechnology company that is a fledgling outfit looking for a fresh round of investments. Robert Duggan was warned of the next investor he wished to interview. They said he was not to be taken in a lighter vein as it would not be a Q&A session as was before.
The person in the camera’s eye was none other than Wayne Rothbaum who was less known for his accomplishments. He failed to be noticed and was a biotechnology stock trader. They said that Rothbaum can be ruthless at times and was notorious for accusing people point-blank of a white lie. He would not be alone and would be tagged by Thomas Turalski. It was learned that Tommy worked for Edelman.
Duggan could be pardoned for his lack of knowledge about Wayne Rothbaum as Rothbaum was known to keep a low profile. There is no photograph of him, neither is he on Linkedin. His trading establishment Quogue Capital was little known on the web as he never had a website. His name cropped up visibly only once with some news clippings mentioning his interest to buy baseballs New yorks Mets and Miami Marlins.
All said and done, Wayne Rothbaum,54 has a net worth of multi-million. He is one of the most successful biotech brokers of his generation. He is one of the more successful founders of companies developing cancer therapies. Rothbaum’s vision hit a winner on one occasion with the backing of one startup, Acerta Pharma which is considered one of the greatest biotech investments of all time. The company developed Calquence, a blood cancer drug that generated $2 billion in revenues last year, and was sold to AstraZeneca in a $7 billion deal a few years ago.