We asked 19 biotech leaders what breaks their deals. It wasn’t the science.
In biotech, tension in one of a company’s most consequential relationships usually becomes visible late. A partner hesitates. The board pushes back on terms everyone assumed were settled. A financing path. . .
In biotech, tension in one of a company’s most consequential relationships usually becomes visible late. A partner hesitates. The board pushes back on terms everyone assumed were settled. A financing path starts competing with a partnering option. A deal structure turns contentious just as momentum builds. But the problem rarely starts there. When executive search firmbioCatalystasked 19 biotech leaders what actually breaks their deals, the answer was rarely the science. It was something upstream: how the Chief Business Officer (CBO)–CEO relationship, together with the board’s governance, had defined authority, information flow, and strategic ownership — often without ever having that conversation explicitly. The CBO role in biotech is still commonly treated as senior business development: someone to find and run deals. In practice, it spans partnering, financing strategy, portfolio choices, board alignment, and the external market signal a company needs to hear. Left undefined, that gap tends to surface only once the stakes are high and the options have narrowed. Why these views matterThe sample was built to capture depth of experience, not volume: 14 interviews with CBOs and heads of BD, five with CEOs. The two groups were independent — none of the CBOs interviewed had worked with the CEOs interviewed — so this isn’t paired testimony about the same relationships, but a comparison of how two populations describe the same structural dynamic from adjacent seats. Companies spanned preclinical to commercial stage, the US and Europe, public and private, single-asset and platform models. Three of the five CEOs had previously been CBOs themselves, giving them a view from both sides. The goal wasn’t a statistically representative survey — with 19 interviews sourced through one search firm’s network, it couldn’t be — but a qualitative read on where experienced operators’ descriptions of the same relationship converge and diverge. The CBO–CEO relationship depends on authority, information, and trustOne conclusion ran through nearly every interview: the relationship works best when authority, information, and trust move together. Where it worked well, the CBO wasn’t a senior execution seat — the role carried explicit scope, real decision rights, meaningful board exposure, and a clear operating rhythm with the CEO. Where it broke down, the same failure modes recurred: unclear ownership, board alignment that came too late, CEO involvement that drifted from escalation into negotiation, and external market feedback that couldn’t compete with internal conviction. A CBO is not a glorified VP of BDThe strongest CBO-CEO relationships started with an explicit, CEO-authorized conversation about scope — before the pressure arrived. Not “BD plus whatever else comes up,” but a specific agreement on what the CBO owns outright, what they co-own, what they influence, and what they merely advise on. That conversation typically covers business development, investor relations, legal and IP, communications, portfolio strategy, fundraising, and any commercial responsibilities the CBO carries. Because companies change, the agreement holds up best as a living document — reopened when a senior hire arrives, when the company shifts stage, or when a major financing closes. “If everybody’s got accountability and authority, then nobody has accountability. ”Both CBOs and CEOs rejected the idea of the CBO as a “glorified VP of BD. ” A role that only spearheads deal-making is a VP of BD job. What these operators described is broader: helping decide which strategic paths are worth pursuing, what trade-offs to make, and how external reality should reshape internal plans. Defining that clearly at the outset is what lets the CBO absorb pressure later, rather than become a source of it. The board can’t become a late-stage veto pointMuch of the discussion centered on two people, but a third kept appearing: the board. CBOs described late-stage objections, economic expectations that were never surfaced early, individual directors unwinding decisions outside the room, and limited access to the people whose views ultimately determined whether a deal could proceed. CEOs, for their part, described the need to design CBO–board engagement deliberately, so the CBO isn’t left isolated in the boardroom. The strongest practice to emerge from both samples was early alignment — not just board awareness, but genuine alignment — through two recurring mechanisms. First, agree deal principles with the full board well before any term sheet, often 12 to 18 months out: the financial floor, the rights to retain, acceptable structures, partners in and out of scope. When an objection surfaces late, the CBO can point back to a decision the board already made. Second, designate one or two board members the CBO can consult during a live negotiation, so positions can be pressure-tested without going to the full board prematurely. The CBO doesn’t need to own the board relationship. But if they represent the company externally, they need enough visibility into how the board thinks internally — otherwise they’re negotiating against a decision-making system they can only partially see. The CEO should be close to the deal, not accidentally in the dealBoth samples rejected the simplistic model where the CEO either stays out of deals entirely or takes them over. The more useful distinction is between choreographed and improvised involvement. “I am hands-off until I’m not. ”Choreographed involvement means the CEO and CBO agree in advance who plays which role. The CBO leads the process, runs the negotiation, develops champions on the partner side, and preserves room to test terms without committing the company too early. The CEO stays close enough to understand direction, align the board, and support senior counterparty relationships — stepping in only when the conversation genuinely requires it. Improvised involvement is what happens when the CEO joins a negotiation out of excitement, signals enthusiasm before terms are tested, or becomes the direct channel for a counterparty relationship the CBO can’t see into. Several CBOs described part of their value as being a buffer for the CEO — the ability to say “I need to run this by my CEO or board” preserves room to reset expectations or say no later. Once the CEO is already in the room, that buffer disappears. The point isn’t that the CEO should be absent; it’s that involvement should be designed before the moment of pressure, not discovered during it. Funding and partnering strategy can’t be run separatelyOne finding was specific enough to biotech to isolate on its own: across the CBO sample, equity raising and partnering couldn’t be cleanly separated at the organizational level. “If the CEO has the objective to raise money and the CBO has the objective to do a $50m+ upfront partnering deal, those are counterproductive objectives. ”Both shape the same variables — dilution, the rights a company retains, strategic control, and timing — yet they’re often run as separate workstreams: the CFO owns the raise, the CBO owns deals, and the CEO arbitrates between them. Under that setup, the real trade-off may never get discussed clearly by anyone. The stronger companies treated financing and partnering as one strategic conversation, weighing the options together rather than defending them function by function. Productive tension is the pointNone of this removes conflict from the relationship — nor should it. Across the interviews, the best CBO–CEO relationships weren’t the ones with the least tension; they were the ones where tension surfaced early enough to be useful. The CBO should bring external market signal into the company before it’s convenient to hear. The CEO should test that signal against strategy, board appetite, and operational reality. The board should be aligned early enough that it never becomes a surprise veto point. Designed that way, friction becomes productive rather than corrosive. Role clarity is not organizational housekeeping. In biotech, it is part of deal preparation. The full report,The CBO–CEO Relationship in Biotech, explores these themes in more depth, drawing on all 19 confidential interviews. Download it here. About the authorKuba Majcheris Founder and Managing Director of bioCatalyst. With over a decade in executive search, he works with biotech and tech-bio companies across Europe and the US on senior partnering, strategy, and commercial leadership appointments. Alongside his search work, he convenes confidential roundtables, interviews industry leaders, and publishes research, sustaining a candid conversation among senior leaders in the field.