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Three consortia remain in the race to buy the British Technology Group,
the organisation which markets inventions and processes developed by academics.
The British government, which is selling BTG, closed the bidding process
last week.

One bid is from a joint staff-management buyout team headed by Ian Harvey,
the chief executive at BTG. The only foreign bid is fronted by Research
Corporations Technology (RCT) of Tucson in Arizona. The other declared bid
is spearheaded by Strategy International (SI), a London-based consultancy.

Harvey’s team has assembled a consortium of around 10 partners – an
assortment of institutional investors and research institutions that are
‘all household names’. CIN, the British Coal pension fund and the second
largest investment fund in Europe, is the leading investor.

A source close to RCT – which is headed by John Ashworth, the vice-principal
of the London School of Economics – last week dismissed calls for it to
be excluded from the sale because BTG’s 8800 patents and 500 licences would
fall into foreign hands. ‘The issue is: who is going to serve the inventors
best?’ he said.

Strategy International, led by Paul Cautley, a former director of
product development at British Rail, said that ‘the underlying skill (of
SI) is in marketing’. This would be BTG’s new focus if his bid succeeded,
he says.