BioCentury
ARTICLE | Finance

Europe's financing iceberg

December 13, 1999 8:00 AM UTC

OXFORD - European biotech may be about to become a victim of its own success. The phenomenal growth in the number of biotech companies in the latter half of the 1990s has created a potentially huge equity gap as companies start looking for larger sums of money to finance later stage development.

The increased interest in growth-style investing and the rise of state-sponsored entrepreneurism has enabled Europe to start a remarkable number of life sciences companies in a few short years. But the drive of venture investors to capture the value created by European science is not yet matched by the maturation of the public capital markets on the continent. Meanwhile, the U.K. has become more cautious as investors digest the industry's initial letdowns in Britain. ...