LOWRY MILLER: Why become a venture capitalist? EVANS: I get really excited when I impart all my knowledge to scientists and get them to do it. And when they succeed, God, they’re making us all money, we’re all making a lot of money, and that drug’s going to hit the market. I’m closer to the action of making lots of money and saving lots of lives. It’s health creation and wealth creation.
The press has described you as arrogant. I think as long as you do decent things and make some money for people and for yourself, it doesn’t matter what people think. I’m not actually a complete arrogant, brash bastard anyway. In the U.K., the more successful you become, the more someone somewhere wants to chop you down.
Is Europe catching up to the United States in biotech? When the genome project burst, it was as if an asteroid broke from the heavens, and the biotech tidal wave [in the United States] suddenly became a tsunami. Europe caught on this year as well. But it’s all been much slower, it’s far less mature than America. Maybe our great tsunami wave will come two to three years from now. But there are a lot of people investing in biotech in Britain and in Europe now. We’re in a bit of a feeding frenzy at the moment.
Why are you targeting Germany? We compiled a database with 1,100 [European] bioscience companies in it. We realized that Germany was the fastest-growing by a long, long way. It finally got the message five years ago that it needed to deregulate in the biotech area. Other countries woke up round about the same time as well, but Germany went for it, because it thought it through.
What happened to the arguments that manipulating genes is evil? I think they just sent them all off to a commune somewhere on some island. I don’t know. They’ve all gone, haven’t they, all those people. I think that everyone has accepted the arguments that biotech is revolutionary, it’s here to stay, it does nothing but good.
Is there a biotech bubble in the market? Definitely valuations are higher in Germany on average than in the U.S. or U.K. There’s going to be a reality check, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are lots of opportunities. Over the next two or three years there should be at least 10 or 12 very good German companies emerging, maybe not necessarily the ones listed now.
What about the rest of Europe? What we’re not seeing is scores of fabulous companies coming out of the other countries in Europe yet. But I think we will next year and the year after. It’s percolating.
Do you have any hot picks for Germany? We invested in Morphochem, a great drug-discovery company. They are going to integrate fantastic advanced chemistry technologies with biological targets, and that will make it a powerhouse for developing new drugs. We hope to list it by the end of next year, 2002 for sure.
What does Merlin bring to Germany? My team has a track record, and you can never take that away. I’ve been doing this 14, 15 years. I’m the grandfather of biotech. We’ve been through every bit of pain and success you could ever have. We’re there as a friend, as an ally. This is definitely not a war, this is a friendly mission.
Even though they set out to beat the U.K.? In Britain, if a wealthy individual invests in a start-up, there are tax exemptions. Once someone floats a company in Germany, investors pay no capital gains tax after one year. Our ministers should do a swap, then Germany and Britain can become stronger, and that’s how you start competing with America, where they’ve got great tax incentives stimulating lots of investment. What we should be doing is looking at America and saying, what can we copy there? I am even prepared to wear those great big checked golfing trousers if it means I can get the kind of gains you can get in America.
