The Team
John Hodgson, Mike Ward and Keith Binding have worked with each other for ten years on a diverse range of projects. By combining our experience and expertise we provide clients with an extensive network of contacts across the biotech, pharmaceutical and investment communities in the UK, Europe and USA.
John Hodgson
John describes himself as a "steam microbiologist", having followed the sector since the early '80s. He is Editor at Large of Nature Biotechnology, and was for six years Editor of Trends in Biotechnology. He has advised biotech start-ups, venture capital funds, major companies in the pharmaceutical and agrochemical sector, scientific foundations, university tech transfer organisations, and European Commission and UK Government bodies on aspects of biotechnology ranging from business planning, fundraising, risk management and technology trends. John is Special Adviser to the UK Parliamentary Trade and Industry Select Committee in its enquiry in to the UK biotechnology sector and is also adviser to BioVision, the World Life Sciences Forum. In 2000 he co-wrote "Managing risk, building value - risk management in the UK life sciences" with Keith.
His assignments in the last two years include providing regulatory advice to an agrochemicals multinational; providing market analysis and positioning advice to a filtration technology company entering the biotechnology market; identifying potential acquisition targets for a leading quoted bioinformatics company; and evaluating potential investments on behalf of a number of the world's largest venture capital funds.
Mike Ward
Mike has been following the biotech sector for almost as long as John, first as an industry commentator and latterly as an investment analyst. He is a former editor of European Chemical News, and former European Editor of BioCentury, the leading trade journal. He is a regular conference speaker on the European biotech circuit and in the last eight years has written eleven European biotech sector reports for the major consultancies.
Mike's recent assignments have included: helping a target-identification company secure venture capital funding by re-focusing on developing a proprietary drug discovery capability; identifying and initiating negotiations with potential licensees of specific compounds for a drug discovery company; providing corporate restructuring and refinancing advice to a European gene therapy company; and providing future trends advice and analyses to four of the world's most significant biotech venture capital funds.
Keith Binding
While John and Mike were cutting their teeth in biotech, Keith was plying his trade as a commercial solicitor. For the past ten years though, he has focused on providing commercialisation support to high technology businesses, primarily in the biotech sector. He was for five years a member of Andersen's UK Life Sciences Group which worked closely with a diverse range of biotechnology companies, from academic spinouts to some of the UK's most mature publicly quoted companies. He is the primary author and researcher of four studies on the UK biotech sector: "UK biotech '94 - the way ahead", "UK biotech '97 - making the right moves", "Technology transfer in the UK life sciences" and "Managing risk, building value - risk management in the UK life sciences". For the past five years he has been an independent consultant. He has been a key player in the development of the UK Research Councils' business plan competitions. In the last three years he has advised over twenty prospective and early-stage academic spinouts, ranging from drug delivery to nutriceutical companies.