Europe must get its science message right
Universities in the UK are to receive a large increase in state funds next year, the Higher Education Funding Council announced earlier this month. The 6.4 per cent rise in funding to £7.1bn is designed to swell the number of students in higher education by almost 50,000.
Interestingly, from the venture capital perspective, an extra £25m has been earmarked to support physics, chemistry and engineering, which are expensive to teach and suffer low student demand. This increased funding aims to address an issue that faces most European countries: with manufacturing and engineering migrating to emerging markets, the sciences are increasingly seen as a backwater. Consider that the most over-subscribed university degree in the UK is Media Studies, which (anyone who has worked in the media will tell you) has limited value to potential employers.
The Confederation of British Industry warned of the consequences of students turning away from the sciences only yesterday. A long-term decline in numbers of scientists and engineers will leave Britain lagging international competitors, it said. "Around 12 per cent of graduates presently leave university with a science, engineering and technology degree and this needs to rise to at least 25 per cent if the UK is to match the predicted growth in jobs,” it believes. In other words, UK companies cannot continue to thrive in areas such as IT, biotech and aerospace unless there is a pipeline of talented and trained people.
China, for one, knows what is at stake and has thrown huge resources into educating a future workforce that will undoubtedly propel it to the number one economic power within a generation. Matching China’s resources and workforce is impossible, but that doesn’t mean that old economies must give up leadership everywhere. They still have technological advantages in many fields and must keep developing them so, at the very least, there will always be synergies with the growth economies of India and China.
Globology, the power of technology and globalisation combined, in theory provides a level playing field for all. But only if the inputs are equal. Europe cannot afford to sit back, accept that the world has moved on and position itself as a service economy. Training people in media, advertising, marketing and banking alone just won’t work because the emerging economies will also develop these skills. Indeed many of these skills are already outsourced to emerging economies.
So while we all applaud more funds in higher education, trumpeting a £25m allocation to the sciences is frankly rather embarrassing. If the UK and the rest of Europe really want to compete globally, a far larger commitment is necessary. That would not only provide valuable resources but send out an unambiguous message to future students and to the world.
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The Week's Deals
Twenty-eight companies gained venture funding this week, twelve were of undisclosed value. The deals raised a total of €94.1m, which is €5.9m on average.
Provigent, the Israel-based developer of ‘system-on-a-chip’ products for the broadband wireless transmission market, has raised $16m (€12.2m) from
Globespan Capital Partners,
Sequoia Capital,
Ascend Technology Ventures,
Delta Ventures,
Magnum Communications Fund,
Pitango Venture Capital and Andrew Viterbi (co-founder of QUALCOMM).
FON, the Spain-based WiFi community, has raised $13m (€9.9m) a second round of funding from existing investors
Index Ventures,
Sequoia Capital and
Google, as well as four new strategic investors, one of which is rumoured to be
BT. Fon provides open source WiFi router software which allows a user's wireless base-station to become a shared WiFi hotspot. The new funding will be used for continued R&D and to grow the number of ‘Foneros’.
Antenova, the UK-based developer of antennas for wireless connectivity, has raised an additional $10m (€7.6m) from
Artemis Investment Management,
Avlar BioVentures (Cambridge Gateway Fund),
CLS Capital Partners (Mirenwest),
FirstVentures,
INVESCO Private Capital,
Panmure Capital and
Quester Capital Management. The funding will be used to accelerate product development and establish additional design centres to further penetrate and support the company’s target markets. Antenova’s antennas are incorporated into mobile handsets, laptop computers and other wireless devices.
Xtract, the Finland-based mobile marketing company, has raised €2m from
Eqvitec Partners, with a second round of funding planned for later this year. Xtract provides customer analytics products that predict customer behavior, with a particular focus on mobile and community marketing.
Elsewhere,
Napatech, the Denmark-based developer of network adapters for high-speed networks raised $7.5m (€5.7m) from
Ferd Venture and
Northzone Ventures;
MXP4, the France-based developer of new technology for the music industry, raised $6.5m (€4.9m) from
Sofinnova Partners and
Ventech; and
Notonthehighstreet Enterprises, the UK-based shopping website, raised an undisclosed amount from
New Media Spark.
See below for a complete list of deal headlines.
Did we miss anything? If you think we have missed a deal or know of a deal that is about to close then send us your
deal news.
The Week's Exits
Neuropharm, the UK-based speciality pharmaceutical company developing treatments for developmental and degenerative disorders of the central nervous system, has floated on AIM. The company is currently reformulating Prozac, or fluoxetine, as an orally dissolving tablet for treating autism. Neuropharm, now valued at about £40m (€59m), intends to use the proceeds of the IPO to complete the development of fluoxetine and launch the product in the US in 2009.
Integral Mobile Data, the UK-based provider of products that enable communication between pocket devices and databases, has been acquired by
OLM Group. UK-based OLM is a provider of information to local authorities and social care providers, and believes that Integral has an excellent competitive position within a highly attractive market segment.
H2Hcare, the Ireland-based software company, has gone into liquidation. H2H was developing technology to manage medical applications and patient records online. The company reportedly had debts of more than €2m, the majority of which were to its investors.
People Moves
MySQL, the Sweden-based open source database developer, has appointed Jeffrey Pugh as vice president of engineering, and Tim O'Reilly as a director. Mr O'Reilly is founder and chief executive of O'Reilly Media, and is credited with coining the phrase “Web 2.0” to describe the wave of internet computing that takes greater advantage of open source software and user interactivity.
BigBand Networks, the Israel-based broadband multimedia infrastructure provider, has appointed David Heard as senior vice president and general manager of product operations. Mr Heard most recently served as president and chief executive of US-based Somera Communications, which was acquired by Telmar in 2006.
Immunovative Therapies, the Israel-based drug development company, has appointed Ron Hart as chairman. Dr Hart is a cancer researcher and former director of the US Food and Drug Administration's National Center for Toxicological Research.
Most Accessed Companies
MycoTeQ, the Denmark-based biotechnology company, has attracted a lot of attention this week. MycoTeQ is a spin-out of the Technical University of Denmark and is using the microfungal collection held there to discover and develop new natural compounds for the pharmaceutical industry. In nature microfungi are involved in many different processes such as the degradation of organic matter, the production of cheese and in causing allergies. MycoTeQ plans to take advantage of the fact that microfungi can also produce compounds used as lifesaving drugs, with the aim of becoming the world's leading external provider of new chemical entities from microfungi. The company is currently backed by
SEED Capital Denmark.
Skysails, the Germany-based company developing wind propulsion systems for ships, has also received a lot of attention recently. Skysails has developed a ‘towing kite’ that the company says can reduce fuel consumption by up to 50 per cent under optimal conditions. This year the company plans to equip the first cargo ships with SkySails’ pilot systems and fully launch the product in 2008. The launch of a system for superyachts is also planned for this year.
Other companies generating interest recently include
UniServity,
The Bunker Secure Hosting, and
Acal Energy.
There are now 9,741 companies in the database and 7,454 investors, comprising 3,749 institutional, 3,068 corporate, 495 individual and 142 other. Of the database's 33,218 contacts, there are 18,903 executive, 7,602 CEOs, 2,532 chair, 1,462 non-executive and 2,719 other.
