Three of the four non-executive directors for Neil Woodford’s forthcoming Patient Capital Trust have ties to Imperial College London’s tech transfer office Imperial Innovations.
The £200m ($309m) fund, due to be launched in April, will maintain a focus on tech startups and university spin-outs – a strategy underlined by Woodford’s non-executive director picks.
The board will be chaired by Susan Searle, former CEO of Imperial Innovations, who led the company through its IPO in 2006 up until moving on from Innovations in 2013 after 20 years at the helm. She will be joined by the CEOs of two of Imperial’s most prominent spin-outs, Scott Brown of battery developer Nexeon and Stephen Harris of Circassia Pharmaceuticals, which last year held the biggest biotech IPO seen in the UK for a number of years.
Woodford’s investments show a keen fondness for Imperial. He has invested £66m into Innovations through his Equity Income fund, and £16m into Circassia.
The fourth non-executive is Louise Makin, CEO of BTG, a life sciences firm known for its snake bite antidotes.
