It’s been a welcome reassurance for this inveterate UK cheerleader that we continue to navigate assorted speed bumps and are productively staying the course with our life science strategy. In 2015, this UK sector continued its renaissance with £1.26 billion being raised on the UK stock market, the highest figure in more than a decade after the nuclear winter that started this decade. A further £708 million was raised through private investment, nearly double over the previous year.
While some funds may have been shifted to healthcare as a defensive move, much of the action here is being driven by greater innovation and a growing movement in the academic sector to set up businesses and raise capital. The quality of our news flow in this first quarter of 2016 is testament to this. For example:
- The continued stellar standing of our universities in global league tables from a country the size of New England
- University College London launching a £50 million technology investment fund
- A Chinese investment firm launching a new £500 million fund to invest in tech startups in Europe
- Merck and Verily launching a Long Term Conditions Early Intervention Programme with NHS England aimed at evaluating the impact of new technologies in preventing costly long term conditions
- AZ, GSK and J&J teaming up with Cambridge, Imperial and UCL in a new £40 million fund, the Apollo Therapeutics Fund, to help turn promising scientific research into new medicines
- A wave of private healthcare facility openings in London which highlights the city’s growing attraction as a global hub for medical treatment and specialist cancer treatment
- Mission Therapeutics raising £60 million to fund its work in a novel biological pathway
- Shield Therapeutics raising £32.5 million in a London flotation despite volatility in the stock markets
- NHS England helping to design 10 ‘healthy new towns’ across the country alongside Public Health England in the hope of developing new solutions to key healthcare challenges such as obesity and dementia
- The UK setting out a vision for “life science opportunity zones” to help ex-Big Pharma campuses transition to hubs for startups
- Cambridge’s Epigenetix securing $29 million of financing
- GW Pharmaceuticals seeing its stock surge nearly 140% after positive results in a Phase III epilepsy trial
- Three Brits, including two current expats and one former expat, recognized as among the most influential people in biopharma today – Simon Stevens, Ian Read and Andrew Thompson
- Vectura and SkyePharma landing a $621 million friendly merger deal creating a respiratory powerhouse
- George Osborne’s latest Budget being viewed as pro-business in some of its measures, including further reductions in corporation tax down to 17% by 2020 and in capital gains tax rates, while the patent box tax incentive scheme was protected
One of the key rationales for BELS is to encourage and enable additional momentum in the sector by reengaging with our life science diaspora who exert so much influence on global decision making. The need for this was brought home to me starkly by an expat CEO (who shall remain anonymous) who shared feedback from a meeting in the US at which assorted advisers pondered potential locations for an overseas investment. When the UK was brought up some in the room roundly trashed the UK for a host of reasons, many of them spurious and with a historical perspective rather than a current one. The CEO’s instinct was to defend the UK but realised he could not do so because he really was not ‘up to speed’ with where things stood.
Our guess is that few of our expats are totally up to speed on current developments in the UK and certainly the feedback we got from last year’s Alumni Summit confirmed that impression. Rest assured we will continue to rectify this situation and provide the community with timely intelligence and business rationales for why the UK should be on everyone’s radar these days!
Nigel Gaymond, BELS Founder & Chairman.