It’s time to catch up on notable headlines from Wisconsin’s innovation community:
—Northwestern Mutual, the Milwaukee-based insurance and wealth management services giant, has hired Souheil Badran as chief innovation officer. Badran was previously president of the Americas region for Alipay, the online payments platform operated by Ant Financial, the Alibaba-owned fintech firm.
Badran’s new role was previously held by Alexa von Tobel, the well-known fintech entrepreneur who left Northwestern Mutual this month to become managing partner of Inspired Capital, an early-stage technology venture firm based in New York that is raising $200 million for its debut fund, according to an SEC filing. Von Tobel joined Northwestern Mutual when it bought her New York-based fintech startup LearnVest in 2015.
—Exact Sciences’ (NASDAQ: EXAS) share price surged nearly 15 percent to close at $75.36 per share on Monday, the day after the Madison-based diagnostic test developer reportedpreliminary financial results for the fourth quarter and all of 2018. When Exact delivers final results next month, the company said it expects to report revenue between $454 million and $455 million for 2018, a 71 percent year-over-year increase. The projected 2018 revenue range is higher than the previous projection of $435 million to $440 million in 2018 revenues, which was shared at the end of October. That month, Exact began co-promoting Cologuard—the company’s flagship diagnostic test that screens patients for colorectal cancer—with sales representatives from pharma giant Pfizer (NYSE: PFE).
As of Friday morning, Exact’s shares were trading at $77.93 apiece. Read the full story here.
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