 |
 |
| Back Issues |
|
|
|
|
ACS Members can sign up to receive C&EN e-mail newsletter.  |
|
|
 Join ACS |
|
|||||||||
|
BUSINESS
Two universities--Imperial College London and Tel Aviv University--have created separate venture-capital funds to help accelerate the commercialization of academic research. These initiatives come at a time when traditional venture investors are reluctant to fund technology start-ups and existing small companies are finding it difficult to raise capital.
"The fund's portfolio technologies have been selected solely on the basis of their upside commercial and economic potential," says Isaac Kohlberg, CEO of RAMOT. He says the goal is to advance the technologies to a point where they can be commercialized. The university and the fund's investors will share any returns generated. In the U.K., Imperial College has joined with fund manager BioScience Managers Ltd. to create the $80 million BML Ventures Imperial Fund. The university's wholly owned technology-transfer company, Imperial College Innovations, will work closely with BML. After raising the $80 million, the fund intends to invest in 12 to 15 start-up and early-stage medical and life sciences companies. About half the money is to go to companies based on the college's own science and the rest into similar investments, predominantly in the U.K. BML and Imperial College believe there's a significant unmet need in the U.K. for money to bridge the financing gap between very early stage commercial activities, which are often government supported, and more established operations that appeal to traditional venture-capital investors. But prospects aren't good for attracting those investors either. Venture investing has declined to lows last seen five to six years ago, reports Rick Snyder, CEO of the investment firm Ardesta. Working in the universities' favor is that biotechnology investments, at about 13%, and those in small-tech areas including nanotechnology, at about 4%, account for growing portions of the overall venture-capital pie. However, this favorable trend hides a bigger problem related to how the money is being spent. Most venture investors are trying to keep their existing portfolio companies alive, Snyder points out, rather than putting money into new opportunities. As a result, the number of new deals dropped from 37% of all investments in 2001 to about 30% in 2002 and could fall to just 20% this year. |
|||||||||
|
Chemical & Engineering News |
|||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
