Previously, he was a reporter and columnist for the Tribune, which he joined in 1961. Witty currently works as interim executive director of the San Diego Historical Society. A New Financing Model Biotechnology companies had better find new financing models, because the old ones no longer work. The public market has lost patience with the long delays between an IPO and product approval, says David Robinson, CEO of Ligand Pharmaceuticals, one of the panelists. Part of the problem is the industry's own fault, Robinson says.
Biotech companies go public too soon.
Companies should in fact mature more value inside so they're not inviting public investors to share in that early dilution. Having been burned, investors have grown hardened to starry-eyed portraits of biotechnology's power and are focusing on hard cash. Leave the biotech part out of it. The battle for the next-generation wireless technology standard, one that has essentially come down to competing proposals by Qualcomm and Sweden's Ericsson, remains at a stalemate, with deadlines missed and national trade organizations firmly injected into the fray. The so-called Third Generation technology, known as 3G, will give tomorrow's wireless devices a leap in performance over today's best digital phones.