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LONDON, June 25 (Reuters) - Banks, investors and big drugcompanies should consider creating a 10-billion-pound ($15.7billion) "megafund" to help biotech firms in London and acrossBritain compete with U.S. rivals, London mayor Boris Johnsonsaid on Thursday.
Britain is a leader in academic scientific work and alsohome to two of the world's top drugmakers - GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca - yet emerging life sciencecompanies often find it difficult to secure funding.
The suggested new pool of debt and equity finance isdesigned to help plug that gap and is one of a number of ideasbeing floated at a conference in London bringing togetherleading figures in industry, finance and research.
The meeting includes representatives from Eli Lilly,Pfizer, Imperial Innovations, Silicon ValleyBank, the European Investment Bank and JPMorgan.
"We hope to harness our role as a global financial centrethat will bring more life-saving drugs to market and deliver ahuge boost to the economy," Johnson said.
The suggested megafund would be able to invest in multipledrugs at different stages of development, with investorsreceiving a percentage of the royalties from successful productsor licensing revenues that result.
($1 = 0.6376 pounds) (Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Pravin Char)
