C-Bridge Capital Closes First Close of Over RMB 7 Billion Buyout Fund, Fu Wei's "Minority" Path

"In a decade, the upstart C-Bridge Capital has come to manage 65 billion yuan."

By Qian Ren

AnYong Waves has learned that C-Bridge Capital has officially held the first close of its first RMB healthcare buyout fund, raising over 7 billion yuan against a target size of 10 billion yuan. This makes it the largest domestic fund focused exclusively on healthcare buyouts. C-Bridge Capital serves as the fund manager, with C-Bridge and Beijing Shunxi Fund serving as general partners — the latter being the market-oriented fund investment platform under Beijing State-owned Assets Management (BSAM).

We understand that the fund's initial anchor investors include state-owned platforms such as BSAM (3.467 billion yuan) and Beijing E-Town International Biomedical Investment Management (3 billion yuan), with the possibility of bringing in market-oriented capital such as insurance funds in subsequent closes.

The investment focus remains squarely in C-Bridge's wheelhouse: healthcare, including biopharma, medical devices, consumer healthcare, and healthcare services — all through the lens of mergers and acquisitions.

This buyout fund marks the second collaboration between C-Bridge Capital, BSAM, and Shunxi Fund. Biotechnology and the health industry are among the four pillar industries of Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area. The new fund combines C-Bridge's global perspective in healthcare M&A and its "investor-operator" model with the resource integration and policy support advantages of Beijing's municipal and district-level state capital.

In ten years, C-Bridge Capital has grown from obscurity into one of the most surprising funds in healthcare investment. Not just because it has raised over $9 billion in a sector rarely considered sexy — and done so with both USD and RMB vehicles marching in lockstep. More crucially, during an era when the primary market frenziedly hunted whales for windfall gains, C-Bridge chose a radically different path of " brute-force miracles" — and proved it works.

In recent years, people have begun studying C-Bridge's playbook, even growing curious about Fu Wei, the post-80s CEO: a non-medical professional turned investor, how did he manage to mobilize massive capital, recruit global talent, and reshape ecosystems with partners when he decided to pivot toward buyouts? Why have large state-owned institutions bet on him twice? And how does he find the right moment to exit when a portfolio company hits its peak?

But one soon discovers that most of Fu's philosophy — such as his metaphor of buyout investors as the "blue-collar workers" of the investment industry, or his comparison of repeatable value creation, experience, and capability accumulation in the buyout process to "engineered" "assembly lines"; or "always do the hard but right thing, make decisions with long-term value for the company" — these are the most universal truths of the overseas buyout industry.

The real moat lies in the ability to organize capital at scale and execute transactions, plus the operational muscle to run a company — these inseparable capabilities are what define the endgame.

Part01

The Victory of the Minority

The most extreme example of C-Bridge's healthcare buyout approach is Everest Medicines.

Everest was the first company C-Bridge co-founded after its 2017 pivot to incubation, taking a "co-entrepreneur" role. It led the $50 million Series A and $60 million Series B rounds, employing the familiar license-in model to quickly build positions in oncology and autoimmune diseases while establishing an in-house R&D platform.

A milestone came in 2019. After a year of overcoming obstacles, Everest spent $835 million to acquire Asian exclusive rights to Trodelvy from Gilead subsidiary Immunomedics — at the time the largest license-in transaction in Asia. This directly propelled Everest to a market cap exceeding HK$20 billion on its 2020 Hong Kong IPO.

The IPO alone would have made C-Bridge, which held over 60% of shares, fabulously wealthy. By conventional logic, waiting for the right moment to exit would have closed the book neatly.

But C-Bridge didn't exit. What followed was a rollercoaster: in 2022, Everest returned Trodelvy rights to Gilead, its stock cratered to HK$6 per share (IPO price: HK$55; peak: HK$104).

The dramatic fall was anticipated — because Fu Wei made the call. In an industry winter, he found a way for the company to survive by cutting off its arm: shedding the unprofitable oncology team, recapturing capital, and focusing on commercialization in nephrology and antibiotics — protecting the base while attacking growth. C-Bridge also leveraged its global network to reconfigure Everest's team and help sell its drugs into Korea, Southeast Asia, and even the US.

Remarkably, on March 7 this year, Everest's stock hit a three-year high, surging past HK$60 to break its 2020 IPO price. From its low, the cumulative gain exceeds 880%, with market cap back above HK$20 billion. New CEO Yongqing Luo has even declared the goal of "10 billion yuan in drug sales by 2030."

I-Mab underwent similar triage: since co-founding it in 2016, C-Bridge drove pipeline assembly and team building through to IPO. In 2023, I-Mab's most closely watched core asset, the CD47 antibody lemzoparlimab, hit setbacks, and market cap shrank dramatically from its $7 billion peak.

C-Bridge Capital decided to split and save itself: divest China assets, retain core internationally valuable pipelines, restructure management. Fu Wei stepped in as I-Mab's new board chairman.

Much has been written about the histories of Everest and I-Mab, but the ability to transform a company on the brink — that's what deserves the most ink in this narrative. Throughout, C-Bridge has operated on an elevated plane, playing the game of making the pie as large as possible: money, ideas, and actions must create unlimited value, executed with unwavering consistency.

For a buyout fund, timing an exit is never the option.

Part02

Bravery Is the Switch of Mindset

Reviewing C-Bridge's fundraising history reveals that its leap in AUM began with its fifth USD fund (over $1.6 billion), plus this 10 billion yuan RMB fund.

The purpose of scale is to lock down bigger targets. In recent years, it has begun trying offshore incubation and buyouts, and attempted its first multinational pharma asset carve-out for the first time.

The acquisition of Hugel, South Korea's largest publicly listed aesthetics company, pieces together a fuller picture of C-Bridge and Fu Wei's ambitions for M&A.

In May 2021, when Hugel's controlling shareholder Bain Capital signaled it would sell control. In three months of extreme execution, C-Bridge partnered with Korean conglomerate GS Group and Mubadala to complete the acquisition of 46.9% of Hugel for 1.7 trillion won (approximately 9.43 billion yuan). C-Bridge Capital was not the highest bidder, but Bain chose them.

Hugel is C-Bridge's largest offshore acquisition to date, and the deal's success greatly tempered C-Bridge's nerve for cross-border M&A. The key to success: the seller bought into C-Bridge's years of building a global platform.

Companies with absolute technological and product dominance as hidden champions must enter the most inflated markets. With product portfolios of the same DNA, they can achieve scale expansion — this multiplier effect holds enormous attraction.

Founded in 2001, Hugel's multiple aesthetics products hold #1 market share in Korea. Constrained by domestic market ceilings, it had long set an international expansion strategy. In 2021, Hugel filed for FDA approval for its blockbuster product Letybo to enter the US market, but was rejected twice due to manufacturing facility management issues. C-Bridge helped Hugel resolve this weakness in the shortest possible time.

Post-acquisition, C-Bridge brought in global aesthetics industry leader Brent L. Saunders, former Chairman and CEO of Allergan, who had successfully built Botox and Juvederm into blockbusters. In 2023, it appointed former LG H&H Chairman Suk-yong Cha as Chairman and Executive Chairman — another Korean business legend who had delivered a staggering 62 consecutive quarters of growth at LG Household & Health Care. His departure was seen by Korean media as the greatest loss in LG H&H's history.

C-Bridge's greatest contribution to Hugel was global connectivity, expanding from 30-plus countries to over 60. Hugel's latest 2024 financials show net sales of 373 billion won (1.902 billion yuan), up 16.7% YoY; net profit of 142.4 billion won (726.24 million yuan), up 45.8% YoY.

Hugel once again validates the viability of C-Bridge's "investment plus operations" model, and C-Bridge began challenging more difficult transactions.

Haisco is C-Bridge's first multinational pharma asset carve-out. It first acquired Takeda's hypertension and diabetes drug business in China in March 2022, using this to build C-Bridge's chronic disease drug platform, then brought in blockbuster drugs like Rocephin and Stilamin. Simultaneously it hired a new CEO, optimized the sales team, and is pursuing its first Southeast Asian acquisition to advance into the broader Asia-Pacific market.

One can see that C-Bridge targets companies with strong industry position, product competitiveness, and stable cash flows, but which have temporarily fallen on hard times for various reasons. Take Haisco: Fu Wei keenly sensed the business's massive potential in the China market, moved decisively, and completed the acquisition at relatively low cost. Afterward, Fu personally participated in strategic planning, restructured the product line, and optimized operations. A series of moves later, the company quickly turned from loss to profit with explosive growth.

Additionally, a through-line in C-Bridge's cross-border acquisitions is buying regional companies and helping them achieve global expansion. C-Bridge itself maintains a global talent pool with employees of more than ten nationalities and diverse backgrounds.

Today's C-Bridge Capital is no longer merely a capital provider, but an operator. According to companies' needs at different development stages, it provides comprehensive solutions ranging from buyouts to structured financing (R-Bridge Credit Fund) to industrial park infrastructure funds (C-Bridge Healthcare Industry Facilities Platform). More importantly, among providers of these products in healthcare — C-Bridge Capital is virtually the only player.

The long-standing "minority" status of buyout investing in China's domestic market is being broken, and C-Bridge Capital offers a case study.

Image source | IC photo

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