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that company we have talked about for years: let’s do machine defeated Kasparov. Dave and I agreed to a deal
it!’ That was the origin of Oxford Molecular Group Plc whereby he would provide £20 million in exchange for
which was originally set up as therapy for me. Its success half the University equity share in any spin-out companies
was all down to Tony who was one of nature’s natural emanating from Chemistry for 15 years. By the time we
entrepreneurs. had done the deal he had sold his company to the then
recently public stock brokers Beeson-Gregory, so we had
While Tony was my student, for rather complicated reasons
he part wrote a film script about C.S.Lewis and was paid to convince their chairman Andrew Beeson of the mutual
£3000; a huge sum for a student at that time. What did he value of the deal. The meeting over lunch was not going
do with the money? He went and bought a steam roller. I well until Andrew suddenly looked at me and asked if it
thought the boy had gone mad until I learned that he took was a Vincent’s Club tie that I happened to be wearing. It
his steam roller to steam rallies and was paid £250. When was and a mutual interest in sport meant that the deal went
he finished his DPhil he was hired by ICI, essentially to take through. His interest in sport was in Real Tennis and the
my technology to the company and was given the biggest connection with my pupil Spike Willcocks who was a world
starting salary for someone at his stage. With his letter of champion was a crucial piece of good fortune.
appointment he went to the bank, borrowed £35,000 and The new Chemistry Research Lab which is as good as any
bought a pair of steam ploughs and took them to steam in the world is thus founded on luck, but attracts the best
rallies. But being Tony, he thought that they must be making of students and is key in recruiting and retaining academic
more money running the rallies, so at the age of 24, six stars.
months in to his first job, he organized his own steam rally, Beeson-Gregory were soon sold to the Evolution Group
making £45,000 in a weekend. By 1988 he had left ICI and who looked at the deal we had done just involving a single
was just running steam engines. Since that was a summer department and generalized it to all subjects and many
activity, we had the chance over the winter to raise funds universities, setting up a subsidiary named IP2IPO Ltd. This
and start the company.
was then floated and became IP Group Plc of which I was
We raised £350,000 of venture capital, just sufficient cash chairman for a while. This is now a FTSE250 public company
for six months. Tony was a great deal maker and we thrived. with a market capitalization of about a billion pounds.
In 1992 we had an IPO, floating on the London Stock One of the first spin-out companies out of the Chemistry
Exchange, selling a third of the company for £10 million. Department was Oxford Nanopore based on the work of
With the cash we expanded into the US, doing seven Hagan Bayley, which had Spike Willcocks as one of its first
takeovers there and growing until we had the biggest slice employees and Gordon Sanghera who started with Allen
of the world bioinformatics market; over 400 employees, Hill as CEO. Although still private, this company has a fair
and a market capitalization of some £450 million. We then value in excess of a billion pounds.
screwed it up and sold the company for £70 million to two
US groups. Because of these lucky breaks, the Department has
contributed at least £100 million to the University and is
In 1996 I became the first head of the Chemistry probably one of the most successful departments in the
Department which had previously been three separate whole world in respect of the creation of businesses and
departments. The big thing in my in-tray was the need wealth, without, it must be stressed compromising its pure
to build a new laboratory as the old ones were in a very research and teaching values.
poor state. The University gave me the site, but no money
and I had to raise some £64 million. We had great help In my dotage I am still involved with spin-out companies,
from a Government scheme, from The Wellcome Trust, in particular with Oxford Drug Design Ltd. This grew out of
from The Wolfson Foundation and E P Abraham as well my screen saver project where I had 3.5 million people from
as from Thomas Swan and from the Salters Company more than 200 countries contributing time on their PCs to
thanks to Sandy Todd. We were however many millions look for anti-cancer drugs. We have what looks to be some
short. Again luck played a big part. From my activity with novel antibiotics which act at a new target and could be of
spin-out companies I knew Dave Norwood, a chess grand enormous importance.
master who had backed computer-based companies having But it has helped to be lucky.
been convinced of their future when the IBM Big Blue

References
Spin-Outs: Creating Businesses from University Intellectual Property (Harriman House, 2009, ISBN:9781905641987).
50 years at Oxford. Author House 2011, ISBN:9781456778613
University Intellectual Property: a source of finance and impact. Harriman-House 2012, ISBN: 0857192272
Entrepreneurship: a case study from Two View Points by Graham Richards and Tony Marchington (http://wetzebra.
com/business-and-finance/entrepreneurship-a-casestudy-from-two-view-points/)

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Periodic
The Magazine of the Department of Chemistry