Biotechs AIM for Alternative Financing - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences
Abstract
London's lesser-known stock exchange offers the possibility of money for hungry biotechs Australian gold mining companies are doing it. Even a farmyard composting firm from Wales is doing it. US biotech companies are doing it, too - raising money through IPOs on London's Alternative Investment Market, known as AIM. Entelos, based in Foster City, Calif. and specializing in mathematical simulations of disease processes, raised $20 million (US) on AIM, and Waltham, Mass.-based Aqua Bounty, a developer of biotech solutions to improve fish farming, raised approximately $37 million in March. With the AIM window apparently open, London-based brokers and advisers are actively prospecting in the US for new clients. Should your company consider it? AIM was set up as a junior market to the London Stock Exchange in order to create a financial marketplace where small and speculative companies could find backing. A lightly-regulated market was seen as a way to get money into companies that might turn out to have world-beating technology, but for whom cash-flow positive operation could be years away. In that regard, AIM has performed as advertised, and might be seen as tailor-made for the financial needs of the biotech industry. One factor driving US