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bax.s. > Copyright 2004 The Financial Times Limited > Financial Times (London, England) > > October 29, 2004 Friday > London Edition 2 > > SECTION: SMALLER COMPANIES UK; Pg. 24 > > LENGTH: 877 words > > HEADLINE: Manchester as a source of investment ideas > > BYLINE: By WILLIAM HALL > > BODY: > > > Alan Gilbert, the new president of Manchester University, is not well known to most of the City of London's > corporate financiers and fund managers. He has spent most of his career in Australia, and only recently arrived in > England to take up the challenge of making a success of merging two provincial universities that have seen better > days. > > Prof Gilbert's brief is to turn the enlarged University of Manchester, formed from its merger with UMIST, into a top > research-based university that can compete with Oxbridge and the US Ivy League. It is a pretty tall order, given > that the success rate of university mergers is even worse than in the corporate world. > > However, Prof Gilbert, chief executive of a university with a Pounds 500m budget and 9,000 staff, has a surprising > amount of freedom to shake things up. His business-minded approach to running the north of England's flagship > university, and its intellectual property policies, might trigger the interest of small-cap fund managers with > longer-term time horizons. > > One of Prof Gilbert's first goals is to capitalise on the enlarged university's strong science base and crank up the > commercialisation of its research ideas. The number of inventions, currently running at 150 a year, is targeted to > increase by at least 10 per cent. > > While Cambridge University, the UK's top research university, has spawned quoted companies such as Domino Printing > Science and Autonomy, one venture capitalist has described the gap between Cambridge and California's Silicon Valley > as "like comparing a seagull with a Boeing 747". On this basis Manchester would be ranked as a scrappy sparrow. > > Although more than 60 companies have been spun off by the two Manchester universities, there have been precious few > stock market successes. NeuTec Pharma, a biotechnology company floated on Aim in 2002, is an exception. But most > have followed Tepnel Life Sciences and failed to live up to expectations. > > Manchester has some interesting companies coming through. Renovo, which has capitalised on research into wound > management, and Transitive, a software company spun out of the university's computer science department, are > front-runners attracting private equity interest. > > Prof Gilbert wants a lot more, and has set himself a target of beefing up the new university's research base by > recruiting some high-profile scientific stars. Ernest Rutherford began his work on splitting the atom in Manchester, > and was the most famous of the 22 Nobel prize winners that have studied there. But Manchester has not had a Nobel > prize winner for the past 50 years and Prof Gilbert wants three on staff within three years. > > But while immediate investor interest in Manchester University may be limited to its ability to begin pumping out > more successful spin-outs, Prof Gilbert also has some interesting views on the future of higher education, which > could have longer-term implications for investors wanting to tap into one of the world's few remaining growth > industries. > > Prior to joining Manchester, Prof Gilbert had been running Melbourne University for eight years. He set up Melbourne > Industry Private, a private university catering to large corporations, and was one of the founders of Universitas > Global, an online Singapore-based university, in partnership with Canada's Thomson Corporation and 17 universities > in Europe, North America and Asia. > > Universitas was set up to offer an alternative to Asian students who could not afford to pay for higher education in > the UK and the US, two countries courting overseas students. Prof Gilbert estimates there is an unmet worldwide > demand for higher education of more than 30m students, which could rise to 100m by the end of the decade. The global > market for higher education is currently worth more than Dollars 100bn (Pounds 55bn). > > As a new boy, Prof Gilbert is keen not to ruffle sensitive British feathers by backing Michael Beloff, president of > Oxford's Trinity College, who has warned that Oxford University might eventually have to take itself private if it > wants to continue competing globally. Prof Gilbert has no intention of recommending the privatisation of Manchester > University. > > But he does believe that the private sector could play an important role in bridging the growing gap between the > demand and supply for higher education around the world. Higher education is "one of the last great craft > industries" that has still to go through its industrial revolution, and traditional universities are not best placed > to deliver on any revolution. But they do have two big advantages - branding and quality assurance - which > commercial rivals lack, and Prof Gilbert is keen to exploit. > > While multinationals, such as Pearson (owners of the Financial Times), Thomson and McGraw Hill are tapping into the > global education market, the UK has yet to see the emergence of quoted for-profit schools to rival the US where the > industry is valued at Dollars 35bn and is one of the hottest stock market sectors. > > Apart from Nord Anglia in nursery education, and BPP in professional education, there are few quoted UK companies in > the sector. If fund managers want a glimpse of how things might look 10 years down the line, they ought to invite > Prof Gilbert to lunch. [EMAIL PROTECTED] David Blackwell is away > On 29 Oct 04, at 18:10, pwd9148 wrote: Ci era rimasta in canna questa: http://www.e-laser.org/htm/news.asp?idNews=427 Se va bene cosi', qualcuno vada a pubblicarla: basta mettere la data giusta (ho messo 2002 e non 2004 per nasconderla in attesa di letture finali) a -- www.e-laser.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- www.e-laser.org [EMAIL PROTECTED]