Randal J. Kirk Biography

Randal J. Kirk (born March 1, 1954 in Pleasanton, California) is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Intrexon, a privately held synthetic biology technology company. Kirk is cited to be one of the most successful biotech company developers in the United States, having founded General Injectables and Vaccines (GIV) and New River Pharmaceuticals, and through his service on the Boards of Directors of many biotech companies, including Clinical Data, Inc, Halozyme Therapeutics, Inc., and Scios, Inc., among others.

Personal life

Kirk's father was an Air Force Master Sergeant, and the family moved several times during his youth. He reports he taught himself to read at age three. After graduation from Dublin High School in Virginia, he worked selling cars and motorcycles, and enrolled part-time at Radford University for some business courses. He later earned a B.A. in Economics at Radford (1976), and a J.D. at the University of Virginia (1979). He was admitted to the bar in 1980, and began his eleven-year practice of law in Bland County, Virginia — where he was the only attorney.

Kirk owns a farm in the Belspring area of Pulaski County, Virginia. He supports higher education and politics. In 1999, he gave $1 million to Radford University. In addition to this donation, Kirk has served on the Board of Directors of the Radford University Foundation, Inc., as well as on the school's Board of Visitors. He was elected Rector of the Board in 2006. Kirk resigned in June 2009 and within a month in July 2009, was appointed to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors, from which he resigned in October 2012, citing his residence change to Florida.

Kirk calls himself a political independent, and has generously supported both Republicans and Democrats. Data published for the end of March 2009 show he donated over $200,000 to Terry McAuliffe's 2009 Virginia gubernatorial election. Since 1999 he donated $1.8 million to candidates for state office in Virginia, principally to Democrats. Since 1994 he has donated $183,250 in federal elections.

The June 2006 issue of Virginia Business magazine listed him as the 12th-richest Virginian, with a net worth of $700 million. His mid-2007 net worth was estimated at $1.2 billion, making him the 6th richest Virginian. In mid-2008, his net worth was estimated at $1.6 billion. In 2013, Forbes listed him as the 613th richest person in the world, with a net worth of $2.4 billion.

Business milestones

In 1983, along with John Gregory, Kirk founded General Injectables and Vaccines (GIV), a Bland County-based next-day supplier of medical supplies to doctors. In the mid-1990s, the successful company spun off King Pharmaceuticals, a Bristol, Tennessee-based company that manufactured drugs that GIV distributed. Kirk and Gregory split, with Kirk keeping control at GIV and Gregory leading King. In 1998, Kirk and his ownership team sold GIV to Henry Schein, Inc. for approximately $65 million cash, with $25 million in deferred payments.

Kirk founded New River Pharmaceuticals Inc., a company that developed technology to make existing drugs safer and more resistant to abuse, and took the company public in 2004. The company developed and won FDA approval for Vyvanse, an attention deficit disorder treatment, in 2007, shortly after Kirk sold the company to Shire plc for $2.6 billion. He owned more than half the company at the time.

In 1999, Kirk began a company called Third Security, LLC, a Radford-based investment firm. Third Security operates as a long-term venture capital fund, "pouring money into startup biotechs for equity or board positions, and remaining with them until they go public or sell out to a strategic buyer." Kirk, however, prefers not to be called a VC. "It's not venture capital; it's not private equity. They're true capitalists. They put money out, they want to know how much is coming back and that kind of jazz," he says. "We're really looking for opportunities where, through our personal efforts, we can add value." In 2004, Third Security combined with Carilion Health System and the Virginia Tech Foundation to create NewVa Capital Partners, a private equity/venture capital fund designed to support private businessmen operating in Southwest Virginia or willing to relocate to the region. Kirk intentionally keeps the number of investments at Third Security relatively small, another way, he insists, he's different from conventional venture funds. "The main thing we look for is, if we believe we can try to help, then we can add value through our personal efforts," he says. "If we're not adding value ourselves, there's not a reason for us to be working in this thing. If we're going to live and sleep and breathe this thing for a decade, we've really got to love it."

Kirk was on the board of Fremont, California-based Scios Inc. when it was acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 2003 for approximately $2.4 billion. More recently, he served as chairman and majority shareholder of Newton, MA.-based Clinical Data, Inc., an antidepressant drug developer that was acquired by New York-based Forest Laboratories Inc. for $1.2 billion in 2011.

Kirk is currently the CEO of Intrexon Corporation, a privately held, synthetic biology company founded in 1998 by Thomas Reed in his last year at the University of Cincinnati, where he was pursuing a Ph.D. in molecular and developmental biology.

He says that the money can come easily if you find something you love "and that society finds valuable."

His new companies have avoided venture capital.