|
28 May 2004
Northbank
Communications reports on recent conferences
Northbank staff
have been out and about, pounding the beat and pressing the flesh
at leading events in the life science calendar in support of our
clients and, of course, to meet new companies as part of our own
business development efforts. Conference attendance helps keep us
up-to-date with what’s going on, so here’s what we gathered
in May, April and March.
Bioconvergence
debut
A new partnering conference made its debut in May. Bioconvergence
brought the financial sector into the world of biotechnology, informatics
and bioinformatics. The inspiration behind the conference was to
create a forum to encourage the exchange of ideas. One such example
was the session on Collaboration presented by Bayer Technology Services
(Leverkusen) and Physiomics, (Oxford) a Northbank client. The two
companies have brought together proprietary software platforms dealing
with pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics and they discussed how
this new approach could help guide drug trial protocols and also
unpick trial failures to create more informed clinical trials.
The conference
fitted nicely into Exhibition Hall 2 of the Barbican on 19 and 20
May and attracted 25 speakers and 170 delegates from global pharmaceutical,
biotechnology and IT companies as well as from investment companies
and academia. It was organised by Simfonec and the Oxford Bioinformatics
Forum in association with SNA, New Scientist, Bayer technology Services
and Physiomics.
Simfonec is
a London Science Enterprise Centre based at CASS Business School.
Oxford Bioinformatics Forum is funded by the South East England
Development Agency.
Dr Susie Stephens,
Principal Product Manager for Oracle Life Sciences, in her talk
underlined the importance for life science companies of embracing
IT in drug discovery. "The effective use of IT will help companies
to access and integrate disparate data. This will enable them to
find critical patterns and insights."
Many of the
presentations given at BioConvergence 2004 are available at http://www.biotechconvergence.com
The next conference
will take place in 2005.
BioEquity
Europe 2004
The talk in Scottish and English media after BioEquity Europe
2004 closed its doors in Edinburgh on May 18 was about IPOs in Scotland
and takeovers in England. The IPO news was Scotland’s, namely
Cyclacel and Ardana. Ardana could float in 18 months and Cyclacel
is contemplating a dual listing on NASDAQ and the LSE. The big M&A
news for England was of course the proposed takeover of Celltech
by Belgium’s pharma and chemicals play, UCB.
The two day
conference had brought together biotechs, private and public, and
venture and asset managers to take a hard look at improving Europe’s
ability to attract finance - and finance on the same scale as US
companies manage. Europe only raises about half the amount that
they do in the States. It’s not, it seems, that European science
does not command competitive valuations but that we have got into
a system of drip feeding our biotechs small amounts of venture money
and demanding a six month milestone check before more is released.
This is old hat now. In the US where the market is of course ten
years ahead in terms of maturity, of both companies and investors,
biotechs get larger funds and are allowed to go away and get on
with building a business.
The requisites
for attracting finance are still good management and good science
but there was a greater emphasis on presenting a clear route to
market for products, and the US market was ignored at your peril.
A physical presence in the US was seen as proof of intent. Did it
therefore follow that a company should also aim to list in the US?
Because of the demands this placed on management time, this was
not seen as making much sense for the smaller company. There was
also a suggestion that European CEOs were not dedicated to pushing
their companies forward 24/7 like their opposite numbers in the
US. Too many holidays and lack of availability were mentioned by
one editor. So the answer to attracting finance is take the mobile
everywhere, at least if you want to impress BioCentury during a
funding round.
Northbank was
a supporter of this year’s BioEquity Europe providing marketing
and PR expertise to promote the conference to fund managers in particular.
Analytica
This year's Analytica in Munich, 12-14 May, was buzzing with
over 1,100 exhibiting companies and more than 34,000 individual
visitors. The broad spectrum of companies attending from the analytics,
laboratory technique and biotechnology sectors make Analytica an
important and interesting event for both visitors and exhibitors.
There was an increase in the number of companies exhibiting this
year as evidenced by the extra wear and tear on the feet of our
three attending staff: Peter Colley, Marc Egelhofer and Katharina
Winterstein. We made some great new contacts and renewed acquaintances
with many of the 'old faces' who, like us, just keep coming back
for more!
Human Genome
Meeting 2004
4-7 April, saw Sue Charles, Rebecca Todd and new recruit Marc
Egelhofer busy manning the press room at the Human Genome Organisations
(HUGO) annual meeting in Berlin. Overall the event was well attended
by 767 scientists from 46 countries. The meeting was a hot bed of
novel and leading science – not only on human genomes, but
also other mammalian and model organisms. Through Northbank’s
efforts this was well reported in the media (see
case study). The event coincided with the publication by Nature
of the rat genome and to celebrate, Nature and Northbank co-hosted
a drinks reception attended by over 100 exhibitor delegates.
BioCapital
Europe
Amsterdam 7 April 2004 and Fiona Brown and Eileen Paul were
at the second BioCapital Europe, the venture conference, with a
strong focus on Benelux countries, co-hosted by LSP and Fortis Bank.
30 companies from Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy,
UK, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway reported on their progress.
Several announced the conclusion of successful funding rounds, largest
of which was Ablynx of Belgium, developing drugs from Nanobodies,
which announced it had raised €25 million ($US 30 million).
But, said Pieter Lucas of Ernst & Young, “Europe locally
cannot produce all the venture investment that is needed for biotech.
In Germany for instance, there are currently 60 companies looking
for $600 million in funding. What is happening is that the gap between
the cash have’s and the have-not’s in the industry is
widening. Martijn Kleijwegt, managing partner Life Sciences Partners
saw the capital markets holding out some hope this year. "2004
is likely to be the last window of opportunity for biotech companies
in Europe to go public for the next three years." he said
Northbank was
the publicists for the conference for the second year running and
took these messages to the media.
http://www.tornado-insider.com/news/article.asp?ID=13283
BioSquare
In the ever expanding biotech conference market, knowing which
events to attend and which offer best value for investment (in time
and money) is a tough call. The formats of many look the same. BioSquare
stands out from the crowd, being well-attended, very well organised
and offering excellent use of executive time. Key to the success
is the highly efficient web-based partnering arrangements, that
allow all attendees (not just presenting companies) to pre-request
meetings and arrive on site with a diary full of 30-minute back-to-back
meetings. Finding time to attend the plenary presentations and three
streams of company presentations is sometimes too much to squeeze
in. 1,150 delegates gathered at the 2004 meeting in Basel on March
10 - 13. 153 companies presented. 3,450 pre-partnered meetings were
arranged in partnering booths (2-3 person sized white rabbit hutches).
This was on top of the usual “corridor” meetings, exhibition
area and two (yes two) reception dinners. Said Eric Poincelet, general
manager of BioSquare's co-organizer, The World Life Sciences Forum
BioVision. "Industry observers estimated that there are two
or three more meetings that take place informally for every one
of those officially arranged sessions. This means a total of more
than 12,000 formal or informal match-makings took place in just
three days.” Northbank will be attending next year and if
2005 is as successful as 2004, then get the date in your calendar
now. See you in Lyons, April 11-15. www.ebdgroup.com/biosquare/
back
to news
|
