Thinking outside the IPO box

With the biotech bear market approaching its three-year anniversary, liquidity events are more associated with a round of cocktails than IPOs. So attendees weren't surprised at the downbeat tenor of a panel's assessment of biotech's liquidity prospects for 2003 at the National Conference on Biotechnology Ventures put on by Oxford Bioscience Partners and Ernst & Young.

Last week's panel - moderated by E&Y's Mike Hildreth and including Lehman Vice Chairman Fred Frank; MPM's Kurt von Emster and Pacific Growth CEO Rick Osgood - generally hewed to the widely held belief that 2003 will not be a banner year for biotech IPOs. ...