EBICap
EBICAPEvidence‑Based Investing · Capital

Platform in Practice

Case Studies

Three professional workflows — showing exactly how EbiCap surfaces what no single Bloomberg terminal, IQVIA feed, or ESG vendor can.

01ESG & Investment

The Governance Signal That Wasn't in Bloomberg

TF 34 · VCShi · 18 months early

02Health Policy

Finding the $500B Disease Nobody Is Treating

847 diseases · 0 Phase 3 trials

03Investigative Journalism

The Drug at $26,500 That Europe Refused

TF 31 · $680M settlements

ESG & Responsible InvestmentLarge Asset ManagerPharmaceutical Governance Screening

“The Governance Signal That Wasn't in Bloomberg”

How an ESG analyst identified a VCShi executive compensation structure eighteen months before a NICE rejection — and initiated an engagement that changed how a portfolio company reported its health outcomes.

VCShi · EbiCap FlagCardiovascular Therapeutic Cluster · Bottom Quintile

Mid-cap European Biopharma — Cardiovascular

TF Score
34 / 100
HTA Benefit
1.1 / 4
MFT Peer Adj
−3.2 pts
VCShi Since
FY 2020
34
/100

EbiCap · Signal as flagged

The Situation

A €220 billion pension fund with a dedicated pharmaceutical ESG mandate held a 1.8% stake in a mid-cap European biopharma. The company's annual report scored well on standard ESG metrics: low carbon intensity, gender-diverse board, no settlement history. Bloomberg ESG gave it a “B”. MSCI rated it “BBB”.

A routine EbiCap screening flagged it with a TF Score of 34/100 — placing it in the bottom quartile of its cardiovascular therapeutic cluster. The Mean Field Peer-Adjustment added an additional −3.2 points — driven by high ownership overlap with three other cardiovascular companies in the same cluster, all scoring below 40. The ownership network field indicated the company's largest institutional holders were applying minimal governance pressure across their cardiovascular holdings.

The Workflow

1
Leaderboard ScreenTF ScoreVCSi/VCShi flagInnovation Quality

Sorted by cardiovascular therapeutic cluster. The company appeared in the bottom quintile. Clicking through — the VCSi classification was amber: three of five executive LTIP triggers were revenue-linked (net sales threshold, market share growth, EBITDA margin). No patient-outcome trigger. No active-comparator trial rate metric. Classified: VCShi.

2
Governance Deep-DiveVCSi Regime TrackerOwnership Accountability TabSLB Registry

The VCSi Regime Tracker showed the company shifted from VCSi to VCShi classification in FY2020, when it restructured its LTIP following a US market entry. At the same time, it issued a €500M Sustainability-Linked Bond with health KPIs tied to... patient access programs in developing markets. Not to European HTA benefit. Not to clinical outcomes.

3
HTA Benefit CheckHTA RatingsUnified Benefit ScoreG-BA / NICE cross-reference

The company's lead cardiovascular product received a G-BA rating of “Zusatznutzen nicht belegt” (additional benefit not proven) in Germany and a preliminary NICE appraisal of “do not recommend at current price” in consultation. EbiCap unified these as a Benefit Score of 1.1/4 — minor or no improvement over existing standard of care. This information was publicly available but not synthesised by any ESG data vendor the fund subscribed to.

4
Peer-Field ContextMFT Peer-AdjustmentCluster Mean FieldOwnership Network Field

The MFT layer showed the company's three shared institutional holders — all large passive managers — held combined positions in eight cardiovascular peers averaging a TF Score of 38. No engagement letters had been filed by any of these holders on clinical outcome KPIs. The ownership network field: φ = −0.61, pulling the MFT adjustment negative.

How It Unfolded

T − 18 months
EbiCap Flags
TF 34, VCShi, MFT −3.2
T − 14 months
Fund Engagement
Formal letter filed
T − 4 months
60% Position Reduced
No substantive response
T = 0
NICE Rejection
"Not recommended"
T + 5 days
Stock −18%
5-day decline

The Outcome

The fund launched a formal engagement, requesting the company add two specific health KPIs to its LTIP: a NICE/G-BA benefit score threshold for new product launches, and a trial publication rate target. The company's IR team had no prepared response — no other shareholder had ever asked this question.

Fourteen months later, the NICE appraisal was finalised: not recommended. The share price fell 18% in five days. The fund had reduced its position by 60% four months prior, following the company's failure to respond substantively to the engagement.

The standard ESG vendors flagged the NICE rejection as a governance event in their next quarterly data update. EbiCap had flagged the underlying structural risk eighteen months earlier.

Explore VCSi Regime Tracker →View Company Leaderboard →
Health Policy & Drug ReimbursementGovernment Health MinistryRare Disease Pipeline Analysis

“Finding the $500 Billion Disease Nobody Is Treating”

How a health ministry team used EbiCap's Disease Gap Map and Economic Value toggle to build the evidence base for a national neglected-disease research fund — including the mortality cost of inaction.

847
Disease Categories Ranked
0
Phase 3 Trials — Visceral Leish
$312B
Economic Value of Cure
140M
Annual Burden (Top 5)

The Situation

A senior health advisor to a national health ministry was tasked with preparing a policy brief for a proposed €800M rare and neglected disease research fund. The brief needed to answer a specific question: which conditions represent the highest ratio of disease burden to active clinical investment — and what is the economic cost of that neglect?

The ministry's internal team had access to WHO GBD reports, ClinicalTrials.gov, and national epidemiology databases. The problem: cross-referencing them manually took weeks, and the resulting analysis was static — unable to incorporate economic welfare values or institutional investment context.

The Workflow

1
Disease Gap Map — DALY ModeWHO GBD 2023Neglect IndexClinicalTrials.gov

The Gap Map showed 847 disease categories ranked by Neglect Index (DALYs per active trial). Filter applied: high-income-country conditions excluded. Remaining top 20: lower respiratory infections, tuberculosis, neonatal encephalopathy, maternal haemorrhage, visceral leishmaniasis. Each with fewer than 8 active Phase 2+ trials globally — despite collectively representing over 140 million DALYs annually.

2
Economic Value ToggleWelfare Value ModelComposite Priority ScoreDisease Social Value API

Switching from DALY mode to Economic Value reordered the list by composite_priority_score — the welfare-adjusted value of a 1% mortality reduction for each condition, scaled by disease prevalence and duration. Visceral leishmaniasis moved from rank 14 to rank 6. The economic value of a cure: $312B NPV based on current affected population welfare calculus. Cost to develop a treatment: estimated $2-4B. The ratio was unmistakable.

3
Pipeline Cross-ReferenceClinical Trials ExplorerCompany Portfolio ViewNeglect Index per disease

Searched active trials for each flagged condition. For visceral leishmaniasis: 6 active trials, all Phase 1 or 2, all sponsored by NGOs or academic institutions. Zero active Phase 3 trials from any company in the EbiCap universe with a TF Score above 30 — confirmed no major pharma participant with genuine development commitment in late-stage pipeline.

4
Institutional Ownership AnalysisOwnership AccountabilityFund HoldingsSLB Registry

Cross-referenced institutional investors holding the 10 companies spending the least on neglected diseases (bottom-decile P4 scores). Twenty-three major asset managers held positions in 5+ of these companies. Of these, 3 had health-linked SLB portfolios — including two bonds with KPIs citing access programs for HIV and malaria, but no clinical development commitment. The policy brief cited this misalignment as evidence for pull-incentive rather than push-funding design.

Disease Burden vs Active Research

Lower Respiratory (LMICs)4 Phase 3 trials
76M DALYs/yr
Neonatal Encephalopathy2 Phase 3 trials
8.7M DALYs/yr
Maternal Haemorrhage1 Phase 3 trial
5.3M DALYs/yr
Visceral LeishmaniasisNo active Phase 3 trials
2.1M DALYs/yr
Chagas DiseaseNo active Phase 3 trials
1.8M DALYs/yr
Annual burden (DALYs)
Active Phase 3 trial

What the Data Showed

ConditionAnnual DALYsActive P3 TrialsEconomic Value of CureNeglect Index
Visceral Leishmaniasis2.1M0$312B∞
Neonatal Encephalopathy8.7M2$1.4T4.35M
Maternal Haemorrhage5.3M1$890B5.30M
Chagas Disease1.8M0$264B∞
Lower Respiratory (LMICs)76M4$4.1T19M

Sources: WHO GBD 2023, ClinicalTrials.gov v2, EbiCap Economic Value API.

The Outcome

The ministry brief cited EbiCap's Neglect Index and Economic Value data across 12 conditions. The proposed fund structure was designed around pull-incentives (advance market commitments) rather than push-funding, specifically because the institutional ownership analysis showed that major asset managers were not incentivising pipeline development in these areas.

The brief was submitted to parliament. The economic case — built from Welfare-adjusted values, cross-referenced against live trial counts — was cited by three independent parliamentary health advisors as “the clearest quantification of pharmaceutical market failure we have seen presented in this format.”

Open Disease Gap Map →View Impact & Welfare Values →
Investigative JournalismPharmaceutical AccountabilityCross-Source Investigation

“The Drug at $26,500 a Year That Europe Refused to Pay For”

How a health journalist cross-linked HTA benefit ratings, executive compensation triggers, physician payments and settlement history — across 12 data sources, in one afternoon — to produce a fully sourced accountability investigation.

VCShi · EbiCap FlagCNS / Neurology Therapeutic Cluster · Bottom Quintile

Alzheimer's Therapy Company — CNS Cluster

TF Score
31 / 100
HTA Benefit
1.5 / 4
Settlements
$680 M
Physician Payments
$22 M / yr
31
/100

EbiCap · Signal as flagged

The Situation

A health correspondent covering drug pricing had been assigned a story following FDA approval of a new Alzheimer's therapy at $26,500/year. The drug had received blockbuster projections from sell-side analysts. The company's stock had risen 40%. The story the market was telling: a breakthrough for patients.

The journalist opened EbiCap and typed the company name. What came back was a different story entirely.

The Workflow

1
Company Profile + TF ScoreTF ScorePillar breakdownInnovation Quality

TF Score: 31/100. P1 (Clinical Benefit): 18/100 — bottom quartile. HTA Benefit Score: 1.5/4. The score wasn't a rounding error. The EbiCap methodology note explained: the drug had received conditional FDA approval under the accelerated approval pathway based on a surrogate endpoint (amyloid plaque reduction), not clinical outcomes. European payers — who require clinical endpoints — were not impressed. Innovation Quality Score: 27/100. First-in-class: yes. Me-too ratio: low. The drug was genuinely novel. The clinical benefit evidence, according to three independent HTA bodies, was not.

2
HTA Cross-ReferenceUnified HTA Benefit ScoreNICE AppraisalG-BA AssessmentEMA EPAR

NICE: Not recommended — clinical evidence insufficient to establish net clinical benefit at the listed price. G-BA: Anhaltspunkt für einen geringen Zusatznutzen (minor additional benefit, uncertain). EMA: Conditional marketing authorisation — confirmatory trial required post-approval. EbiCap showed all three on a single benefit-score timeline, with the FDA approval marked against them. Three of the world's most rigorous regulatory bodies had reviewed the same evidence and declined to endorse payment at the listed price. This was in no analyst report the journalist found.

3
Executive Compensation CheckVCSi/VCShi ClassificationDEF 14A NLPCEO Pay Components

VCShi classification, flagged in FY2022. CEO LTIP triggers: net revenue from the Alzheimer's drug (target: $1.5B by FY2025), US market share, and share price performance vs. pharma index. No patient outcome trigger. No functional independence metric. No NICE/G-BA benefit requirement. The CEO would earn a $12M bonus if the drug sold $1.5B — regardless of whether the patients who took it improved. EbiCap translated this directly from the proxy statement, automatically.

4
Settlement & Physician Payment HistorySettlement TrackerDOJ Enforcement ActionsPhysician Payments (Open Payments)

Enforcement history: two prior settlements, totalling $680M — one for off-label promotion, one for kickback scheme involving specialist physician speakers. Current physician payments: $22M in FY2023 to neurologists, including $850K to the lead investigator of the pivotal trial. EbiCap surfaced all of this in one company view. The journalist had not found the full settlement history from any other source; the DOJ records required separate database searches with different identifier formats.

5
Institutional Ownership + Fund ContextOwnership AccountabilityFund HoldingsSLB RegistryGAOF Fund Flag

Institutional ownership decomposition: largest holders included three funds with explicit health-outcome mandates in their public statements. Cross-referencing with EbiCap fund data: none of these funds had filed engagement letters on clinical outcome KPIs for this company. One had issued its own ESG report citing it as a “responsible pharma investment.” The fund's ESG team had not apparently read the NICE rejection.

What Markets Were Told

  • → FDA approved — breakthrough Alzheimer's drug
  • → Peak sales projection: $4B annually
  • → Strong ESG profile — board diversity, no violations
  • → CEO pay tied to execution on growth plan

What EbiCap Showed

  • ↓ NICE rejected. G-BA: minor benefit only. EMA: conditional.
  • ↓ HTA Benefit Score: 1.5/4 — patient improvement not proven
  • ↓ CEO bonus: $12M if drug revenue reaches $1.5B, regardless of outcomes
  • ↓ $680M in prior settlements. $22M in current physician payments.

The Outcome

The investigation was published in a major financial newspaper under the headline: “Approved in America, Rejected in Europe: The $26,500 Drug With No Proven Patient Benefit.” It was shared 40,000 times in 48 hours.

The piece cited EbiCap as the source for the unified HTA comparison, executive compensation analysis, and physician payment data — all independently verifiable from public filings, synthesised in one platform.

The company's US pricing came under Congressional scrutiny three weeks later. CMS launched a Medicare coverage review. The stock gave back 22% of its post-approval gain.

How the Story Arc Ran

Day 1
FDA Approval
Stock +40%
Day 1
EbiCap Investigation
5 signals flagged
Day 3
Story Published
40 k shares in 48 h
Week 3
Congressional Scrutiny
Pricing review launched
Week 6
Stock −22%
From post-approval peak
Search Companies →Browse HTA Ratings →Settlement Tracker →

Your Workflow Starts Here

The data exists. It's public.
We've already linked it.

Twelve public regulatory, clinical, and financial data sources — synthesised into one accountability platform. No analyst subjectivity. No paid data feeds. No Bloomberg subscription required.

View Company RankingsRead the Methodology

Data sources: ClinicalTrials.gov · SEC EDGAR · NICE · G-BA/IQWiG · HAS · FDA Orange Book · WHO GBD · DOJ · NIH iCite · SEC 13-F · ICMA SLB Registry · CMS Medicare Part D