Imperial Innovations receives £50m backing from European Investment Bank

Imperial Innovations Group, a UK-based technology commercialisation company, has secured a new £50m loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to support investment in the UK biotech and life science sector.

The £50m is available for draw down over a period of two years and is repayable over a maximum of nine years following the date of the first draw down. It follows a previous loan facility for £30m from the EIB, agreed in July 2013.

This further funding will enable Imperial Innovations to increase the rate and scale of its investments in existing and new portfolio companies, with a particular focus on the therapeutics and medtech sectors. As of 31 January this year, the Group's portfolio of companies was valued at £262m, with medtech and therapeutics representing 79.2% of this total.

Imperial Innovations works with Europe’s top four research-intensive universities – Imperial College, Oxford, Cambridge, and UCL – to identify university research at an early stage and develop it to build substantial, high quality, well-funded and well-managed businesses.

Imperial Innovations' Chief Executive Russ Cummings said: 'Since securing the first EIB facility in July 2013, the support of the EIB has allowed Innovations to invest more than £62m in early-stage life sciences companies, across 23 companies, which includes the addition of seven new companies to our portfolio. The original plan was to commit this expenditure over a five-year period, but we have been able to execute the plan in only two by virtue of the increasing maturity of our portfolio and the rich opportunities derived from our extensive network of academics, entrepreneurs, management teams and co-investors within the “Golden Triangle” of London, Oxford and Cambridge.

To secure a second facility from the EIB is a clear endorsement of the quality, maturity and breadth of our portfolio, as well as our expertise in investing and developing both early stage and developing businesses.'