Biotech avoids fall out from tough quarter for capital markets, says Burrill report

The biotechnology industry came through a very turbulent 2008 first quarter relatively unscathed with the Burrill Biotech Select Index, a price-weighted index tracking 20 of the sector's "blue chip" companies, finishing unchanged compared to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which closed down 7.5%, and the Nasdaq, the value of which dropped 14%.

"Despite a sea of red numbers for our other indices, the Burrill Biotech Select Index recorded a credible gain of close to 4% in the month of March," said Steven Burrill, chief executive of Burrill & Co, a San Francisco, USA-based life sciences firm active in venture capital, private equity, merchant banking and media. "This gain was in spite of the fact that the quarter was a bad one any way you sliced it. Investors have been shell shocked in the wake of not only surging oil prices, the declining dollar and the housing slump, but also near chaos in the financial markets with Wall Street almost imploding in the wake of a massive global liquidity crisis," he noted.