Biotech venture capital funding on track to beat 2016 figures, says BIA

New data, released by the UK BioIndustry Association (BIA) and Informa Pharma Intelligence, has revealed that the venture capital funding and secondary offerings in the biotech sector are on track to beat last year’s figures, maintaining the UK’s lead within Europe.

Topline data from the ‘Biotech Financing Update, January–June 2017’ demonstrate that UK biotech continues to dominate venture capital funding in Europe and it is also ranked third in a global setting, raising £361.4 million. Other key outcomes show that at the halfway point for this year, seed, second round and later funding are all on track to meet or surpass the figures for 2016; secondary public funding rounds are on track to meet or surpass last year’s figures with £261 million raised in 16 offerings across AIM and Nasdaq; and the emergence of Biopharma Credit could be a novel source of debt finance for UK life science.

In discussing this novel source of debt finance, Informa Analyst, John Hodgson, stated: “UK markets are seizing an opportunity to provide debt financing for life sciences companies. If properly managed, the specialist biopharma credit funds could spread confidence in the sector among generalist investors.”

“The UK sector continues to excel at producing great science that attracts investment from around the world. It is encouraging to see UK companies maturing and attracting later round venture capital funding. We look forward to this maturity feeding across to the public markets as we track this data each quarter and for public market figures to improve in the second half of the year,” said BIA CEO, Steve Bates OBE. “UK bioscience companies have global ambitions but have long-lacked the domestic financial support they need to scale and take on their US and Asian rivals. It’s great to see the government working with industry to address this issue through the Patient Capital Review.

“The BIA submission to the Review sets out a series of practical measures that alongside the forthcoming sector deal for life sciences have the capacity to enable the UK to become the leading place in the world to discover and develop new therapies and technologies, and scale businesses to a global level to capture their full economic potential.”