MOVES-Credit Suisse bolsters life sciences banking team -memo

By Carl O'Donnell

Sept 5 (Reuters) - Credit Suisse Group AG has brought on three new senior investment bankers as it continues to build out its healthcare investment banking division, according to an internal memo reviewed by Reuters.

The three managing directors, Andrew Singer, Lorenzo Paoletti and Liav Abraham, will join Credit Suisse this fall, the memo said.

The hires bulk up Credit Suisse's life sciences banking team at a time when mergers and acquisition activity in the sector is at a record high for the year to date, according to Refinitiv data.

So far this year, there has been nearly $300 million in life sciences mergers and acquisition activity, including Bristol-Myers Squibb Co's $90 billion acquisition of Celgene Corp, Abbvie Inc's $63 billion deal for Allergan Plc, and Mylan Nv's merger with Pfizer Inc's established drugs business.

Singer, who will be based in San Francisco, is joining Credit Suisse as a managing director. He was previously at Wells Fargo & Co. He has 20 years of investment banking experience including at Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and Robertson Stephens. He also worked at Blackstone Group Inc and Epizyme Inc, a biotechnology company where he was chief financial officer.

Paoletti is coming to Credit Suisse from RBC to work as a managing director focused on the biopharmaceutical sector. He will be based in New York. Prior to RBC, he worked in Barclays Plc's healthcare investment banking group.

Abraham, who will also be a managing director based in New York, was previously at Citigroup Inc, where she was an equity research analyst covering specialty pharmaceuticals and co-head of the U.S. healthcare equity research team.

So far this year, Credit Suisse has worked on transactions for Bayer AG and Merck & Co Inc as well as capital raises for companies including Intercept Pharmaceuticals , Ascendis Pharma A/S and Cortexyme Inc . (Reporting by Carl O'Donnell Editing by Tom Brown)