I appreciate the opportunity to appear before this committee to testify specifically concerning our views on venture capital, the biotechnology industry, and their dependence on an efficient marketplace.
Island is an automated trading system for equity securities.
It gives brokers the power to electronically display and match customer orders in equity securities. All this will be done on a single computer about the size of Chairman Mack's podium. We are here today because an integral sector of our economy, biotechnology, is having difficulty raising capital. In fact, capital raised through Initial Public Offerings or IPOs declined 48 percent in 1998. Although there are recent signs of improvement, more needs to be done to ensure the health of the biotechnology sector.