EU IPO figures for 2014 dwarf previous 5 years combined

The biotech IPO boom was slow to cross the Atlantic. From 2009 to 2013, European biotechs raised €303 million ($350 million) in home-turf IPOs, around 10% of the amount their U.S. peers pocketed in just one of those years. The situation improved dramatically in 2014, though.

Biotech market analyst Biocom reports local IPOs by European biotechs generated €719.8 million in 2014, more than twice as much as was raised in the previous 5 years combined. Circassia (LON:CIR) alone bagged almost as much in its March IPO as the 26 biotechs that braved the inhospitable public European markets from 2009 to 2013. The London-based vaccine developer raised £200 million, making it the biggest of the 15 life science IPOs on European markets in 2014.

Circassia's IPO also helped London pip Paris to the title of most active financial center for biotech IPOs. London hosted 6 life science IPOs in 2014, compared to 5 in Paris. And that small difference gave London more public life science companies overall. London exchanges now house 33 public life science companies. Paris has 32. The other four European life science IPOs in 2014 took place in Amsterdam, Brussels, Oslo and Zurich.

y Biocom's tally, a further 7 European biotechs chose to list in the U.S. UniQure ($QURE) CEO Jörn Aldag told Biocom the appeal of the U.S. is partly due to its scale. When uniQure came to list, it looked for an exchange with multiple comparable companies. The fragmentation of European stock exchanges--and in uniQure's case the lack of listed gene therapy companies in the region--made the U.S. the only choice.

"If setting up a standard stock exchange for biotech stocks in Europe could be achieved, it would then be easier for U.S. investors to get to grips with the regulations at the stock exchange center. It would certainly also be easier for European investors to compare 10 to 15 biotech stocks with one another in a common stock market segment," Aldag said.

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