Millions ahead for Microscience chiefs

FLOTATION of a Wokingham-based biotechnology company will net £10m for its management and founders, including five London doctors.

Microscience intends to float on Aim next month, raising £40m of new money and giving it a market capitalisation of between £120m and £140m.

The company specialises in developing oral vaccines. Chief executive Rod Richards, 45, has a 2% stake in the business, and that holding will be worth about £2m when the company floats.

The rest of management own another 8% between them. Finance director Ian Miscampbell and chief scientific officer Dr Steve Chatfield teamed up with Richards shortly after he took over the business in 1998.

They were later joined by medical director Dr John St Clair Roberts. All of management will hold on to their stakes for at least a year after the float.

The business was developed from work done by three senior researchers at Imperial College London. Dr Robert Feldman, Professor David Holden and Professor Gordon Dougan together still own just under 1%.

Venture capitalist backers led by Apax and Sir Christopher Evans's Merlin Biosciences, which together own 89% of the business, intend to inject another £10m into the firm at flotation.

Microscience's vaccines range from a once-only oral typhoid vaccine to an oral treatment for 'travellers diarrhoea' and what could be the first-ever injectable meningitis B vaccine.