New Board Member Oliver Schacht to Co-chair the Working Group on Finance and Taxation

BIO Deutschland’s Working Group on Finance and Taxation met in Munich on 29 January 2014 at the invitation of KPMG. During the meeting, the chairman of the working group, Dirk Honold, welcomed his new co-chair, Oliver Schacht, who will co-run the group with him in the future. Oliver Schacht takes over from Jan Schmidt-Brandt, who co-chaired the working group with Dirk Honold for many years and now no longer has the time needed for this role, as he has taken up a new position.

The first item on the agenda was the idea from the UK to set up a Citizens’ Innovation Fund to finance research-intensive innovative companies. This fund would give people the opportunity to make tax-advantaged investments of up to £15,000 per year in innovative small and medium-sized companies (SME). The UK fund would be based on the French model (Fonds Communs de Placement dans l’Innovation – FCPI).

The working group’s meeting included a talk on compliance management for board members of biotech companies, as well as discussion on whether a specialised financing network should be set up for life science firms in Germany. This idea could be developed using the example of capmatch medical. The next step is to use a suggestion by capmatch medical as a basis for exploring whether it is sensible and feasible to roll out this approach.

The final item on the agenda was future topics and events, particularly the CFO Meeting in May. In the future, the working group will deal with topics including loss carry-forward (Section 8c of the Corporation Tax Act), which is pending at the Federal Constitutional Court; the introduction of a venture capital act, as contained in the German government’s coalition agreement; and exploring the idea of introducing a new stock exchange segment called Market 2.0 aimed at revitalising initial public offerings for young, innovative and fast-growing companies.