Moneybrains of Britain

ACADEMICS are joining the ranks of millionaires as big business rushes to recruit brainpower.

Philip Beresford, an expert on Britain's wealthiest people, said: "Anyone who seems to have a half decent idea seems to get venture capital backing for it now. There is a lot of money chasing around. It's good news for an academic who has a good idea because they can usually negotiate good terms with the venture capitalist."

Dr Beresford, who compiles the annual Sunday Times rich list, said biotechnology was the money-spinner of the 1990s.

"Investors are getting very excited about biotechnology because they can see the potential around the corner rather than years and years away," he said.

It has superseded computer science, which had been the way to get rich quick in the early 1980s. Now many large companies have developed their own computer base.

But medicine, electronics and engineering continue to offer opportunities for academics open to commercial possibilities.

John Finbow, 50, worked in the chemistry department at City University in London before making his millions from City Technology Holdings with fellow chemist Brian Hobbs.

Now managing director of the company, Mr Finbow owns shares worth about Pounds 8.5 million, while Dr Hobbs, technical director, has shares of about Pounds 5 million.

The company began in 1977 with four staff in the cellar of City University developing electrochemical methods of measuring oxygen and pollutant levels in confined spaces.

In 1992, they staged a management buyout, followed in June this year by a Stock Market flotation.

Dr Hobbs, 55, said: "If you want to become a millionaire through your academic or scientific work, you first have to have something that works and that people want, you have to know your market and you have to work hard."

Not content with building up personal interests worth about Pounds 60 million, Chris Evans is now trying to turn other scientists into entrepreneurs. Dr Evans, a visiting professor at Exeter University, floated his two drug development companies Celsis International and Chiroscience in 1993. He has since branched out of biotechnology to set up Merlin Ventures, which provides seed capital for start-up companies.

The company works by identifying scientists with ideas, linking them with executives and funding them for the first year.

Now he is also floating Toad Plc, a company specialising in vehicle security.

Medical lecturers Graham Rook and John Stanford have built up fortunes of more than Pounds 5 million each through their company Stanford Rook Holdings, based in London.

The company specialises in developing an immunotherapeutic agent for treating tuberculosis, including the type associated with HIV, and cancers. Both still work in the school of medicine at University College, London.