Financing-related issues and difficulties for Canadian biotechnology companies

摘要

Based on in-depth interviews with a large sample of company executives, this paper presents the financing-related issues and difficulties facing Canadian biotechnology companies in the biopharmaceutical, ag-biotech, and bio-environmental industrial segments. The findings of this study lead to a series of unresolved concerns that require further thought, information gathering, and analysis. Some of these concerns are whether or not suppliers of funds in Canada have substantially different risk tolerances than suppliers in the USA, and whether or not the level of technical knowledge and sophistication of personnel in the providers of capital to the biotechnology sector is adequate. We provide some suggested courses of action for addressing these concerns in more depth.