Mind you, I’m not waking up at the crack of dawn anymore, so by the time I get to the gym all the frantic City boys and girls are gone.”"It’s great that you’re not panicking about getting another City job,” I say “I really admire you for that. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll find something soon; you’re so good at what you do.”Jane looks at me quizzically, and wrinkles up her nose “Mmm,” she says. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but the main reason I’m not afraid about not getting another City job is that I’m not sure I really want one. I’m thinking of a change of career.”¿ thetrader hotmail . Dr Andrew Clark is one of the pioneers of investment in the fast-growing and volatile bio-technology sector. A scientist with a PhD from the University of St Andrews, his experience of experimental research before entering the City has given him a keen insight into this highly speculative area of the new economy
Dr Andrew Clark is one of the pioneers of investment in the fast-growing and volatile bio-technology sector. A scientist with a PhD from the University of St Andrews, his experience of experimental research before entering the City has given him a keen insight into this highly speculative area of the new economy.”I was doing post-doctoral work in Oxford at the end of the 1980s.
But there are two drawbacks to being a research scientist they don’t pay you much and you have no job security when your project ends. I had just got married and we wanted a family, so I was looking for something with more stability.”At that time, there was a lot of coverage of guys driving their Porsches and spending big bonuses in the City. I started with the broking firm of Smith New Court, where my knowledge of statistics, spreadsheets and the like was put to work in its Japanese derivatives trading group.”Three years later, he was invited to join Barings as a biotechnology analyst. “Barings was a very forward-thinking house and we established an emerging industries team, with myself on biotechs, another analyst covering the internet, another covering telecoms and so on. It was going well until Nick Leeson rather did it in for Baring Securities.”Dr Clark was introduced to Michael Bourne, a technology fund manager who was setting up a specialist investment firm, Reabourne, a joint venture with investment house Rea Brothers, to cover technology-based companies.
He asked Dr Clark to join him as its biotech specialist.”We look at what we call ‘price-to-opportunity’ factors, which means we try to avoid companies making things for a non-existent market or sectors where the combined market capitalisation of all the participants is above the total market size. We also avoid areas where the venture capitalists have been active, as they are simply building up the competition within the sector 18 months or so down the line.” Reabourne’s first project was the launch of the Finsbury Technology Investment Trust, followed in 1997 by Finsbury Life Sciences.Finsbury Life Sciences did not have the easiest of births. “We raised £30m it would have been closer to £60m but for Celltech blowing up during the offer period. Biotech didn’t start to get moving until 1999, when the big holdings all started to perform well for us, stocks like Celltech, Shire and Cambridge Antibodies.”"We invest bottom-up, stock by stock, and we are not interested in benchmarks.
