Bradwell windfall with part-sale of Binding Site
Jun 22 2009 by Alun Thorne, Birmingham Post
The man behind one of the Midlands’ most successful businesses is in line for a multi-million pound windfall after agreeing to sell part of the company.
Professor Jo Bradwell could personally make tens of millions of pounds after agreeing to sell the autoimmune operation of Binding Site Ltd for about £80million.
The professor of medicine at Birmingham University started the diagnostics company 30 years ago and has seen it grow into one of the region’s most successful biotech companies.
The company has developed Freelite, a successful blood test used by doctors treating patients with multiple myeloma (MM), a cancer of cells in the bone marrow, as well as Hevylite, that reduces the need for painful biopsies that is going through the approval process.
MM, which used to be confined mainly to people over 60 but is becoming more common among younger age groups, affects about 20,000 people in the UK. More than 15,000 cases are being diagnosed each year in the United States.
The success of Freelite, which not only cures sufferers but can increase their life expectancy by providing doctors with a sensitive test to the effectiveness of anti-MM drugs, saw the company enjoy sales of £39 milllion last year with pre-tax profits of £5.8 million.
The autoimmune arm of the business manufactures a range of diagnostic assays and reagents used in hospital laboratories worldwide to help diagnose and monitor the treatment of autoimmune diseases including antiphospholipid syndrome, vasculitis and coeliac disease. It saw revenues of about £14 million in 2008.
A spokesman for Binding Site said the sale of the autoimmune business would enable the company to focus its efforts and resources on the highly-successful serum protein business, which has been growing at rates of more than 40 per cent a year.
He said: “This has not been the main part of the business – it generates about a third of revenues. Nevertheless that has been growing by about 12-14 per cent every year and that is pretty good by anyone’s standards.
“Freelite has been approved and that is now growing and Hevylite is with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US for approval. Significant resources will now be necessary to grow that side of the business.”
Prof Bradwell, who is 64 today, is chairman of the company and the major shareholder – the company is run by chief executive Paul Duncan. The spokesman said this sale was the culmination of three decades of hard work.
He said: “He has been building the business for 30 years, it is his science and he has created 400 jobs. This will be the first time that he and other shareholders have taken some money out of the business and got some benefit.”
The spokesman added that the takeover should have a minimal effect on the employees at the firm.
He said: “My understanding is that the implications on the jobs front is almost zero. There will be some people transferred to the new owner with most of the other workers transferred to the protein side of the business. The new owner will still need the Binding Site to manufacture the product for the time being so all in all it should be positive.”
