BioCentury
ARTICLE | Finance

Europe’s Iceberg 2006

May 8, 2006 7:00 AM UTC

Europe’s biotech sector has reached a stage of maturity where companies need to raise substantial amounts of money to support product development. In recent years, VCs have stepped up to the plate, with top-tier privates now raising sums on a par with their U.S. counterparts. And the public equity markets are more open to IPOs than at any time in the recent past, having finally recovered their nerve after their drubbing in the genomics bubble. But a E50 million IPO will get a company only so far - so the real question for European companies is where the next E100 million will come from.

In recent years, the search for catalytic cash has led some European companies to seek out U.S. capital by re-inventing themselves as U.S. companies, either by simply shifting their headquarters to the U.S. or by acquiring or reverse-merging into U.S. companies. ...