Mr Peter Keen

KANDO id: 25917

Bio

Peter has 28 years' experience in the financial management of technology companies both as an executive and an investor. In 1984, he joined his first technology business, Agricultural Genetics Ltd based on the Cambridge Science Park, moving after 4 years to the diagnostic business Cambridge Life Sciences plc. Over a 2 year period he was instrumental in its reorganisation and trade sale, leaving at that time to join Enzymatix Ltd out of which was spun a number of technologies and businesses. One of these was Chiroscience Group plc where he was a co-founder and as Finance Director led the £102m initial public offering in March 1994. In 1996 he co-founded the venture capital firm Merlin Biosciences as its UK Managing Director and was responsible for many early stage healthcare investments. Six of these were investments backing spin-outs from UK universities which he helped to build; four of these including Vectura plc are public companies and the private company BioVex was recently sold for a consideration of up to $1bn. Another investment was Arakis whom he joined in a full time capacity in 2004 and then subsequently led the negotiations for its sale to the Japanese biotech company Sosei for £106m. More recently he was a venture partner with the technology VC DFJ Esprit. He is currently a Director of the Biotechnology Growth Trust plc a £280m investment trust investing in global biotechnology and Abcam plc where he is the Senior Independent Director having joined prior to its initial public offering in 2005. Abcam, based on the Cambridge Science Park, has grown from 60 to over 700 employees with facilities in the US, Japan and China and currently has a market capitalisation of over £1bn. He is also a Director of MRC Technology and has previously been on the Board of University Challenge Funds at Imperial College London and University of Aberystwyth and the general partner of The Rainbow Seed Fund, which provides seed capital to commercialise the outcomes of scientific research in various publicly funded organisations. For over six years he was a member of the British Venture Capital Association’s Technology Committee. Peter has a degree in Economics and is a chartered accountant having qualified with Arthur Young (now Ernst & Young) in London.


Career


Biotechnology Growth Trust PLC

From

DFJ Esprit LLP

Venture capital firm.
Partner (past)
Email: [email protected]

Excalibur Fund Managers Ltd

N/A (past)

Cambridge Innovation Capital PLC

CIC was established with the support of the University of Cambridge (UC) to invest in high growth early-stage technology spinouts from UC and the area
Director (past)
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Director (past)
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Education

Actual initial investment stage
N/A (1)

Selected investments

Displaying 1 - 1 of 1
Profile Country Funding
Cambridge Nutraceuticals N/A Initial investment led the round