Reid calls for lifescience investment
Growing lifescience businesses need access to finance before they can even contemplate pursuing the government’s research and development agenda. That's the opinion of Toby Reid, the new director of BioCity in Nottingham.
Speaking at an Insider round table event, Reid said: "Of course there are R&D tax credits, but what growing businesses really need is access to finance in the first place. We’ve got from the regional development agencies to the technology strategy board, and that’s a big change in terms of the finance companies can source.
“The big challenge for innovative businesses now is how they can move into the next level. Everyone is scrabbling around for the next half a million – what we need is the depth of fund that can really make a difference because at the moment a lot of business owners feel that they the only option they have is to exit.”
Reid said that the length of time it took for companies to source funding was holding them back.
He added: "You can go to Silicon Valley and make a £10m deal happen very quickly. In the UK the only real angel investors interested in the high-tech or lifescience businesses are in Cambridge or London. What we need is someone to take on the due diligence and be the catalyst for a deal to happen."
Reid said that in some way Astra Zeneca’s decision to close its Loughborough plant was a good thing for the bioscience industry in the East Midlands.
"What you’ll have is 3,000 scientists no longer working on R&D who want to get back into it. If they can access the funds to start their own companies, then this is great news for our sector," he said.
Reid said that although he thought the public sector has had a role to play in supporting growing businesses, the private sector now had to stand on its own two feet.
"What the public sector did was perhaps prop up businesses that shouldn’t have survived. Support should be self-selective," he added.
