Our experience
From the creation of a new animal health company, through finance to the exit, our industry experience and connections make us efficient and valuable partners.
Dr George Gunn
Founder / Chairman
George Gunn is founder of Stonehaven Holding AG and founder and CEO of Stonehaven Consulting AG. George retired from Novartis AG in 2015 where he had been a member of the Executive Committee since 2008. He joined Novartis in 2003 as Head of Animal Health, North America and moved on to head Novartis Animal Health from 2004. He went on to be head of the Novartis Consumer Health Division and also managed the Corporate Social Responsibility area for the Novartis Corporation. George is a veterinarian by education and has spent more than 30 years in the Healthcare Industry. George received the Pharmacia Chairman’s Leadership award in 2002 and the Novartis Chairman’s Excellence award for Talent Development in 2007. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Federation of Animal Health in 2015 and from Animal Pharm in 2017 for his services to the Animal Health Industry. In 2008 George received the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery from the University of Edinburgh.
Matthias Hofer
Founder and Non-Executive Director
Matthias Hofer is a Partner at Stonehaven Consulting AG and founder of Stonehaven Incubate AG with over 13 years of experience in Animal Health. He served on the executive committees of two major Animal Health companies for a total of 7 years. Between 2009 and 2013 he led the global Aqua Health business at Novartis Animal Health (NAH). Later on, he was Global Leader Emerging Business at Elanco and a member of Elanco’s global executive committee. During 2014 and with Elanco’s intention to buy NAH, Matthias served as overall pre-merger integration leader on the Novartis side. In that role, Matthias led a large team and efforts to prepare integration pre-closing overall including carve-out preparations of operations linked to Novartis. Matthias is a business leader with broad international experience and strength in sales, strategy and execution.
Mark Heffernan, PhD
Non-Executive Director
Mark has had a career spanning nearly 2 decades as co-founder and CEO in private and public companies, including the animal health monoclonal antibody company Nexvet Biopharma plc, which was sold to Zoetis in July 2017. For Nexvet he and his team raised over $80m during 2011-2017, including a Nasdaq IPO.
His experience spans both human biotechnology start-ups and animal health R&D companies, and he has raised over $150m in private and public capital raisings and built successful global teams to execute drug discovery and development. He has a PhD from Monash University.
Cormac G. Kilty, PhD
Non-Executive Director
Cormac is a Biotech Entrepreneur retired from executive functions; managing a biotech investment portfolio and involved with two Angel Investment groups in Ireland.
He was voted one of the top 100 influential Ireland-US business leaders by 'Business and Finance' in 2007 and 2008 and was awarded the U.S.-Ireland Biolink award for contribution to Irish Life Sciences in 2007.