Global Biotechnology Industry, Biotechnology Market, Biotechnology Industry Report

The global biotechnology industry is projected to continue showing a robust growth through 2008. This is in perfect accord to 2007 where the global biotechnology industry achieved path breaking levels in tems of financing and deal making. Though this year would be an acid test for the industry due to recession in US and European markets. Ernst & Young reported the following key findings for the year 2007.

American and European companies raised more than US$29.9 billion in 2007.
In Europe the industry raised around €5.5 billion, this is an increase of approximately 18% from €4.6 billion in the year 2006.
Venture financing reached sclaed new heights in 2007 with investment to the tune of US$7.5 billion.
Globally, the net loss of the industry came down to US$2.7 billion from US$7.4 billion in 2006.
Revenues for global public biotechnology company rose to 8%, crossing for the first time the US$80 billion mark.
In United States of America, the total value of all the deals announced for the year including m erger & acquisitions and strategic alliances was someting very close to US$60 billion. This was much much ahead of the figures for all previous years. The figure for such deals in Europe was about US$34 billion.

Key Trends Reported in the Biotech Industry
The report by Ernst & young has also identified three key trends sweeping the biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.

Reinventon of the big pharma companies: Faced by unprecedented patent expirations, pharma companies are now trying hard to boost the bottomlines by cost cutting and deal making. The the report points out that these are at best temporal measures. In the longer perspective, the pharma companies should think about fundamentally reinventing their structures as well as incentives. This is necessary for improving productivity of their efforts towards innovation. Biotech firms, must work joinltly with big pharma, use creative business models for having increased flexibility and a bigger share of the value they are helping to create.
The ascent of personalized medicine: The adoption of personalized medicine is quickened by business drivers like pricing pressures along with safety concerns. It is predicted that with personalized medicine there will be a paradigm shift in the competitive landscape. It will change fundamentally the bargaining power of small and big drug companies. Thus forcing the firms to to have look at the conventional sources of competitive advantage.
Globalization: Like personalized medicine, globalization is also altering the traditional competitive advantages derived by pharma and biotech companies. It is reported that that financial gains attained by these companies by lowering drug development costs, will be temporary. The real opportunity lies in the emerging markets in Asia, latin america where western companies must work with partners and develop innovative products according to the needs of the local market.

Global Biotechnology Industry: Smooth Sailing in 2008