A month after saying he would resign in the face of sexual harassment allegations, the founder of biotech’s largest and most powerful hedge fund is still on the job, according a federal filing.
Sam Isaly’s signature appears at the bottom of a document submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, a filing that lists him as the managing partner of OrbiMed.
Isaly said early last month that he would resign, two days after the publication of a STAT investigation in which six former OrbiMed employees said he regularly sexually harassed the firm’s female employees, particularly executive assistants. Two of the former employees said he repeatedly exposed female colleagues to pornography in the office. One said Isaly played a prank on her with a sex toy.
Isaly denied the allegations, and OrbiMed said it would conduct an internal investigation into the matter.
OrbiMed never disclosed just when Isaly would step down. Jonathan Silverstein and Carter Neild, two partners at OrbiMed, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. They have not responded to repeated questions from STAT about when Isaly will resign his position. STAT contacted nine of OrbiMed’s clients, including California’s $220 billion pension fund for teachers and the $1 trillion asset-manager TIAA. All either did not respond or declined to comment.
In an interview with STAT on Dec. 4, Silverstein and Neild defended Isaly and said they had never witnessed him sexually harass employees and never heard complaints about such behavior. The following day, hours before STAT published a story detailing allegations against Isaly, Neild said in an email that “if this article proceeds, I hope that you will be fair and focus it on the person responsible, not the entire firm.”
OrbiMed, which manages about $15 billion, said in December that Isaly would be replaced by a committee including Silverstein and fellow partners Sven Borho and Carl Gordon.
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