ThinkEquity jumps into biotech as rivals flee

By Toni Clarke

BOSTON, Jan. 23 (Reuters) - ThinkEquity LLC is forming a new healthcare group as it seeks to take advantage of turmoil in the biotechnology sector.

The firm is putting together a new team of healthcare analysts and bankers at a time Wall Street is shedding jobs and the biotech sector is on the brink of implosion.

While some are fleeing the sector, ThinkEquity believes there are opportunities to pick diamonds from the rough.

Of the country's 400 public biotech companies, roughly 75 percent have less than one year of cash, and 120 of those have less than six months of cash, according to Burrill & Company, a specialist life science bank.

The crisis has prompted some investment banks to get out of biotech altogether. In November, Susquehanna Financial Group shut down its midtown Manhattan office and fired about 30 people, including its healthcare analysts.

"We were trying to provide banking and research to a sector of the market that's been demolished," a spokesman for the firm said at the time.

ThinkEquity, which is the U.S. arm of UK investment bank Panmure Gordon & Co, sees opportunity in the turmoil. It promptly snapped up two Susquehanna biotech analysts, Jason Kolbert and Brian Skorney, who will begin publishing research for ThinkEquity next week.

It has also hired Glenn Garmont, formerly at Broadpoint Capital, to follow healthcare services companies. More hires are on the way.