SWK Holdings announced it has hired J. Brett Pope and Winston L. Black III as its chief executive officer and managing director, respectively, to build a specialty finance and asset management business.

SWK said Pope will be joining the board of directors effective June 30, 2012. These actions have been unanimously approved by the SWK Board. The specialty finance and asset management businesses will be conducted through separate subsidiaries.

SWK estimates that the current addressable market for commercialized life science product monetizations is in excess of $40 billion globally. In 2011 alone, the value of the publicly announced pharmaceutical royalty monetizations was in excess of $2 billion. SWK believes this market is poised for substantial long-term growth due to the combination of an increasing number of life science product license agreements, particularly in biopharma, and the attractiveness of product monetizations as a source of capital for life science innovators.

Pope and Black were the co-founders of PBS Capital Management, a firm established in 2009 to deploy capital in the health care and pharmaceutical royalty market. Prior to founding PBS Capital, they were employed at Highland Capital Management in Dallas. Pope was a partner at Highland Capital, where he served in various roles including senior portfolio manager, overseeing a healthcare portfolio, as well as Co-Head of Private Equity.

Black served as a senior portfolio analyst at Highland Capital where he managed a healthcare portfolio. Prior to joining Highland, Black was COO/analyst and chief compliance officer at Mallette Capital Management, a biotech-focused hedge fund.

SWK’s strategy is to provide capital to a broad range of life science companies, institutions and inventors. SWK will initially focus on monetizing cash flow streams derived from commercial-stage products and related intellectual property through royalty purchases and financings, as well as through the creation of synthetic revenue interests in commercialized products. SWK intends to fill a niche that the Company believes is underserved in the sub-$50 million transaction size.

To view the full text of SWK Holdings’ news release, click here.