Executive Interview – Imperial Innovations

Imperial Innovations (IVO) is a technology transfer, incubation and venture investment company. It invests in ventures from Imperial College London, Cambridge and Oxford universities and UCL (the “Golden Triangle”). More than 90% of its portfolio value is in 20 companies, with the majority (c 70%) of its investment value in Healthcare and the remainder in Materials/Engineering (c 20%) and ICT/Digital (c 10%).

In this webcast, CEO Russ Cummings provides an overview of key recent developments at Innovations, discusses trends in the increasingly buoyant field of life science investment companies and looks ahead to upcoming milestones for the group. Russ talks about the balance of the portfolio, which has benefited from strong growth in its therapeutics companies (eg Circassia’s IPO on the London main market) and contrasts the investment case for Innovations with other UK-listed investment companies. One key development last year was a £150m capital raise, so Russ discusses how the group intends to deploy this capital across its portfolio of companies and highlights some important recent investments, such as leading a £50m round in Cell Medica and an £18m round in Veryan Medical.