The sort of speech Michael Heseltine would have been happy to make? Pull the other one. Ian Lang signalled a quite fundamental shift in government policy towards takeovers and mergers in a speech to the Adam Smith Institute yesterday. There is no shortage of funds, capital is available, but only recently have we seen the quality of investment opportunities matching those of the USA."The UK needed to have one or two "role models" to convince investors that biotechnology was not merely an American phenomenon. The Oxford-based British Biotechnology company was turning into just such a role model, following recent stock market excitement about its prospects, he added.British Biotechnology is expected to report further results of clinical trials of its Marimastat anti-cancer drug shortly. Responding to criticism that BIL had a disproportionate amount of its portfolio in the US, Mr Curnock Cook said: "We would like to see more opportunities in the UK. It had only 15 listed biotech companies compared with 275 in the US. Mr Curnock Cook said interest had returned to the biotechnology sector because tangible results in terms of drugs receiving regulatory approval, could now be seen.At a biotechnology investment conference at the Dorchester hotel in London, he said, there had been 170 alliances between major pharmaceutical companies and start-up biotech firms in the past year, whereas in 1993, there were only 60 such alliances.In 1995, about $4.5 bn (pounds 3bn) of new funding was raised on the markets for biotechnology, while the eight biggest deals last year between European pharmaceutical companies and US biotech firms were worth more than pounds 550m."If you analyse the balance sheets of the pharmaceutical industry, then about $15bn to $20bn is available to support collaborations of this nature," Mr Curnock Cook said.Rothschild Asset Management is investment adviser to Biotechnology Investments Ltd (BIL).

Too few scientific entrepreneurs are coming forward to start up biotechnology companies in Britain, venture capitalists said yesterday. Speaking as Vanguard Medica, the latest biotech entrant to the Stock Exchange, shot to a hefty price premium, Jeremy Curnock Cook of Rothschild Asset Management said Britain was running five to six years behind the US. That, and Henry Cooke Lumsden's pounds 20m estimate, have now been torn up.A month later, Cameron McColl, Memory's president and chief executive officer, gave an upbeat presentation to UBS clients following a distribution deal with Sumitomo of Japan.. Back in January the broker UBS tipped the shares to go to pounds 10 by 1998, forecasting profits of pounds 16m this year.

The shares were placed with institutional investors at 160p and rose steadily to peak at pounds 10 in November.Loss-making Memory's warning of possible stock write-downs was its second in a little over a month and followed a string of disappointments, including production delays and missed profit targets which have raised doubts in the industry over whether it will ever make any money.The Scottish-based company buys defective chips, repairs them and creates refurbished boards for computer manufacturers.It initially estimated the value of its market at pounds 20bn by the year 2000, but last year posted a nearly-doubled pounds 1.95m loss.The collapse has left many in the City with egg on their faces. It now says some high-margin sales have been deferred to the second half.Slower-than-expected trading in the Middle East and Asia/Pacific and problems with raw material purchasing were also blamed.The run of bad news has tarnished Telspec's reputation as one of the brightest new issues of 1994. Last month it unveiled 1995 pre-tax profits of pounds 8.7m - pounds 1.5m below market expectations. Shares in the AIM-listed microchip repairer Memory suffered a similar fate, closing down 37p at 133p yesterday to test an all-time low of 130p, on news that sales of computer memory chips aimed at Apple and the bottom end of personal computer markets had been disappointing. The profit warnings are likely to infuriate investors in both companies.Mr Hackett-Jones raised almost pounds 15m when he sold two million shares at 772p last September, while Memory has had a torrid time since the heavily promoted shares were placed by Manchester broker Henry Cooke Lumsden at 420p last autumn - just before US giant Intel launched a price war in the computer chip market.Prices have since fallen by over 60 per cent to a level some observers feel is permanent.Telspec warned in February that contracts for products worth pounds 6m had been delayed.