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Nature Biotechnology 27, 531–537 (1 June 2009) | doi:10.1038/nbt0609-531

Wasting cash|[mdash]|the decline of the British biotech sector

Graham Smith , Muhammad Safwan Akram , Keith Redpath & William Bains

Despite historic leadership in European biotech, the UK's industry has suffered a near collapse in the past two years and now has little private or public investment and no candidates for world-class companies. In this article, we argue that a combination of severe undercapitalization of UK companies, overgenerous boardroom cash remuneration, and lack of share- or performance-related reward for top executives has resulted in many executives not only spending company cash on nonproductive activities, but also in some cases frittering away already dwindling company financial resources in a manner that hastens the demise of their firms.