Going Public: When will Take-off Point be Reached?

Abstract

‘In 1983, Biogen made its first initial public offering, at the same time as Amgen, Applied Biosystems, and Chiron. Two years later, in 1985, out of the blue, the Biogen board contacted me and asked me if I’d come up here and run Biogen, and I’ve been doing just that, having taken over from Professor Walter Gilbert. Biogen was in a very serious financial condition, and it was clearly going bust. It was losing about $30m a year and it was running out of cash. As Business Week reported, “The company was sliding deeper into the red as its scientists pursued 15 diverse projects ranging from cancer drugs to nickel extraction.”