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Using money from the national tobacco settlement to bolster biotechnology ventures holds promise for North Carolina.
Jump to full article: Raleigh (NC) News & Observer, 2002-08-19
Intro: In its disclosure last week of a plan to invest $70.4 million of the national tobacco settlement money as a stimulus to the state's economy, especially in the biotechnology industry, the nonprofit Golden LEAF Foundation gave North Carolinians a lot to chew on. . .
There's hardly an absence of risk in what the Golden LEAF Foundation proposes to do. For the first time, for example, it will be taking about $18 million from its capital funds to round out the grant program. Heretofore, its $16 million in grants for some 100 projects has come from investment income.
Yet North Carolina, after all, is in a strong position already when it ranked fourth in the nation last year in bioscience with its 14 publicly owned and 73 privately held companies. With this much to build on, the investments of venture capital in sizable amounts could prove to be a real catalyst.
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