CHALLENGES clearly appeal to Louise Makin. Three years ago she took the top
slot at BTG, the loss-making biotech firm. This week, after a radical
overhaul, she will announce a second successive year of profits.
Next month she will compete in the gruelling Three Peaks yacht race – sailing
the coast between Snowdon, Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis, and running up the
mountains at each stage. She did that last year, too. Some might find this
slightly scary.
But Makin, 46, a mother of two who got the exercise bug while rowing for
Cambridge, just makes light of it. “I love being part of a team and I really
enjoy doing things that are difficult to do,” she smiles. “I can do anything
up to a full off-road marathon.”
If that makes her sound steely, she is – the two-thirds of BTG’s employees who
have left since 2004 will testify to that. But it’s not the whole story.
Makin, a former ICI executive, has reorganised a complicated business at
BTG, which develops medical innovations with a variety of partners.
She has also given hope to shareholders who have been through the wringer in
the past decade. They have seen BTG’s shares float at 27p in 1995, top
1,500p in 2000, then fall below 100p in 2004. Last week, with good results
in the offing, the shares closed at 144p.
For a small company that invests heavily in scientific research, that is some
ride. But BTG has always been more about prospects than marketable products,
and now those prospects look good.
But how good? Makin, sitting in a third-floor meeting room in BTG’s London
base near St Paul’s cathedral, is bullish. “We are in an exciting position.
We are building one of Europe’s leading life-sciences companies.” Then she
adds: “Shire has made the journey we aspire to.” Shire, the pharmaceuticals
company that started above a Hampshire shop two decades ago, now has a
market value of more than £6 billion. BTG is worth £218m. That shows the
sort of mountain that Makin likes to conquer.
Yet when you meet her, you wouldn’t guess it. Lean and composed, with brown
bob, blue eyes and black trouser suit, War-rington-born Makin presents a
demure corporate face. She has a PhD in metallurgy, spent 13 years at ICI,
and four at Baxter Healthcare, the giant American pharmaceuticals firm. She
clearly knows her way around both big business and research science.
She took on BTG because she liked the challenge, and wanted to run her own
show. “It would have been safer to stick with a big company but I was really
interested because of BTG’s technologies. I thought I could make the company
more successful.”
Back then, those technologies stretched from the physical sciences – including
software and engineering – to drug research, a legacy of BTG’s heritage as
the British Technology Group, a state-run body that commercialised
innovations from publicly funded research. Research on hovercraft and MRI
scanners are part of that legacy.
The company essentially dealt in intellectual property, taking in research
from British universities, commissioning its own research, and then
licensing out potential winners for others to take to market.
By the time Makin joined, its disparate interests had undermined
profitability. It lurched into a £35m loss in 2004-5. Makin is scrupulously
polite about what she found at the company, but others suggest she was
surprised at the lack of cash management.
“It really was a bunch of scientists trying to run a business without enough
cash savvy,” says one. “She had to take drastic action.”
Makin instigated a strategic review and later announced that the company would
concentrate on life sciences, while continuing to harvest income from
licences in other fields. The rest could go.
Since then its principal focus has been on oncology (cancer) and neuroscience,
where the company was already strong and demand is high. “We are now in a
fantastic position to build value,” says Makin.
BTG chairman Sir Brian Fender, who hired Makin, argues that the reorganisation
will reduce the company’s reliance on getting the occasional “big winner” to
subsidise everything else.
Treatments for gastric cancer, tumours, multiple sclerosis, varicose veins,
migraine and head lice are in development, and a clutch of other products
are licensed to drug companies for clinical trials. Makin now leads a
slimmed-down team of drug development and licensing experts.
How slimmed down? “We were 180 people. Now we are 70, of which 20 are new.”
Does that make her Hatchet Louise? She looks hurt. “Hardly,” she says. The
firm has good relations with all former employees. And she is on first-name
terms with everyone. “That’s the joy of it. I spend a lot of time
interacting with staff and each makes a difference,” she says.
Just as intriguingly, four out of eight directors on the BTG board are now
women, including the chief financial officer (CFO). It’s rare to find that
balance in a quoted company. Is it a matriarchy?
She gives me a look. “No, I always recruit the best and Christine Soden, our
CFO, is the best.” Soden, previously CFO at Oxagen and Celltech
Chiroscience, brings valuable biotech experience.
Anyway, says Makin, gender has never been an issue in her career. “I don’t
think of myself as a woman in business. I think of myself as an individual.”
It is not meant as a put-down, just as an expression of fact. Former
colleagues attest that Makin is unusual in that she lacks any ego. That can
make her seem unworldly and certainly uncomfortable in an interview.
“Louise is very good at bridging the gap between science and commerce. She is
always focused on finding a result,” says Geoff Tudhope, her former boss at
ICI. “But there is also an innocence there which is part of the charm.”
Second-guessing the way in which a cynical press thinks is one challenge she
still has to master. At times, describing “the journey” that she and her
company are on, she comes perilously close to sounding like David Brent. And
you hope it is a coincidence that the yacht she crews in the Three Peaks
race is called Journey Maker.
But then her crew blog on the Three Peaks website, about the benefits of team
work and the privilege of contributing to the team’s nominated charity, wins
you over with its earnest sincerity.
The blog of her husband – teacher and former rowing coach Tim Lucas – is more
tongue-in-cheek. He writes that his biggest achievement recently has been
“readjusting to life as a stay-at-home dad”. Keeping up with Makin, you
would guess, is hard work.
And that, of course, may be more information than Makin would want revealed –
or more than she would ever think anyone was interested in.
“For me it’s always about the team, and having the freedom to create the team,
and to be part of it,” she says, when I ask what drives her on in business.
Plus, she adds, the chance to do something in healthcare that helps people.
Makin has always had goals. Born the only daughter of a brewery production
manager, she went to an all-girls school in Chester and an all-girls college
at Cambridge. She had set her sights on reading science from an early age.
She has an elder brother, a biochemist, also in the brewing industry. She
just wanted “to explore science”.
That led on to her PhD investigation of lithium, sponsored by Alcan, then a
leap into business with ICI. A stint at English China Clays followed, then
top jobs for Baxter in Brussels and Zurich. There she immersed herself in
healthcare, running its European biopharmaceuticals division, before a
restruc-turing persuaded her to look for her first job as chief executive.
She plumped for biotech because of its prospects.
“It’s a hugely exciting sector,” she says, “and the difference here is that we
already had revenues.”
Now that she has covered the costs of the business, the next step is to see if
BTG can hold on to the products it helps develop.
“Only one in ten drugs that enter trials get to the market,” she points out.
“This is a business where things won’t always work and we have to not worry
about that.”
Will a big pharmaceuticals company just gobble up BTG if it develops a real
winner? She doesn’t answer that directly. She says she wants to build a
company that makes a difference.
“If you get your kicks from working your way up a company, you are not going
to enjoy it here – we are a small company. But if you get your kicks from
working on a programme and seeing the importance of what you do, and working
with very bright people, with a range of skills – well, that appeals to a
lot of people. What’s important for all of us is putting the company first.
It’s not a business where one person has all the answers.”
And with that we finish, and chat on the way to the lifts, where she gives me
a bone-crunching handshake. Ouch. She doesn’t look big enough to hurt that
much, but appearances can be deceptive.
VITAL STATISTICS
Born:November 27, 1960
Marital status:married, with two children
School:Queen’s School, Chester
University:Newnham College, Cambridge
First job:sales and marketing trainee at ICI
Salary package:£330,000 plus bonus
Homes:West Sussex and the City
Car:blue left-hand-drive Subaru Legacy
Favourite book:Touching the Void, by Joe Simpson
Favourite music:The Who
Favourite film:Four Weddings and a Funeral
Favourite gadget:Polar heart-rate monitor for running
Last holiday:Skiing in Engelberg, Switzerland
DOWNTIME
LOUISE MAKIN is a keen runner and is competing in next month’s Three Peaks
Yacht race. “Half the team can’t sail and half the team can’t run. It should
be fun,” she says. She will be running up the peaks carrying a 7kg pack, and
raising money for her team’s nominated charity The Bendrigg Trust, which
provides activity holidays for disabled and disadvantaged kids.
Makin used to row in the Cambridge lightweight ladies team. Now, besides
running, she likes to ski as much as possible. She keeps a left-hand drive
Subaru specifically to drive the family to the slopes.
LOUISE MAKIN’S WORKING DAY
THE BTG chief executive wakes after 6am at her home on the Downs north of
Brighton. Louise Makin takes the train into London and is at her desk in
BTG’s St Paul’s base by 8am. “It’s straight into back-to-back meetings,”
says Makin. “A lot of it is reviewing programmes we are involved in. If
there is time, there is a lot of reading to be done too.”
She will hold breakfast and lunch meetings with investors and potential
partners, and often doesn’t finish work until 10pm.
Some nights she stays at her London flat near BTG’s office and walks into
work. She will often go for a run first.
