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Alizyme: Can Low Risk Last Forever?

 
• By Chris Morrison

Alizyme's GBP16.1 million, barely discounted placing and open offer illustrates its investors' faith in its low-risk business model and maturing pipeline. It also provides leverage for negotiating the out-licensing deals those investors now expect.

"One of the most unusual things about Cambridge-based Alizyme PLC is the business model on which it was founded," suggests Richard Palmer, PhD, who has fronted the company since joining it as COO in September 1996 from Glaxo Wellcome (now part of GlaxoSmithKline PLC ) and became CEO in March 1997. In 1995, when Alizyme started up, "the company didn't have any of its own intellectual property, they had no platform or anything from which to generate multiple products, and none of Alizyme's founders had ever worked in the industry," he says.

VCs wouldn't touch the company seven years ago. Alizyme instead had to go directly to the UK's Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in 1996, despite its early stage and relative inexperience. Today, however, many VCs find comfort in the risk-limiting strategy that has got Alizyme to where it is

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