BIL Regains Ground As Biotech Sector Recovers

1996 was a year of mixed fortunes for biotechnology stocks. Share pricesrose steadily on bullish sentiment for the first five months of the year, but by the second half the bulls had exited and share prices weakened. UK biotechnology stocks performed incredibly well in the first half of the year, and companies such as PPL Therapeutics, Vanguard Medica, Alizyme, Peptide Therapeutics, and Cantab Pharma announced plans for share offerings and placings. In the USA, there were public offerings from companies such as Immune Response, Idec, Interneuron Pharmaceuticals, Affymetrix and Progenitor.

By the second half of the year, the sector had weakened significantly. In the UK, the flood of share issues in the first half, which included British Biotech's L143 million ($234.7 million) rights issue - the largest ever in the sector was thought by some to have brought about the weakness. Alizyme was one firm to be caught by the bears and captured only a third of the value it had hoped for.

Biotechnology Investments Limited, an independent, publicly-quoted investment company, has been closely watching these developments. The firm is the largest European specialist biotechnology fund and focuses on investing in start-up and early-stage companies in the worldwide biotechnology, medical technology and health care fields.