Mystery investor buys 13.5 per cent of Brain Resource Co

By Jeremy Torr
Thursday, 29 May, 2003

Sydney's Brain Resource Company, a compiler of global brain function databases, has benefited from a 13.5 per cent, $AUD2.5 million share buy from a mystery investor.

Dr Evian Gordon, BRC's chairman and CEO, said the news was very good, both as a validation of the business concept and for the company in terms of working capital.

"We are very glad; this is really good news. The [share buy] came from a high net worth individual who has good investment insight into our segment. The other good thing was that he approached us, we didn't go to him," he said.

Gordon said the cash would be directed towards strengthening the sales and marketing aspects of the company, which recently announced a partnership agreement with IBM to develop and package a new low-cost, high-access, cognitive touchscreen for its testing process.

"It's been really good for us so far this year -- all we have to do now is justify these people's confidence in us, and prove that we can consolidate and grow the business," he said.

Noting that the company did not see any immediate expansion of activity, rather a strengthening of services into the existing market, Gordon said focusing on existing centres in the US, Holland, the UK and Australia would be the company's immediate concern.

"Neuroinformatics is a totally new space, and we will see more collaborations, more databases like ours, and many interesting developments in the near future," he added.

Gordon, who had just returned from addressing a conference of the Human Brain Project in Washington, said the IBM deal and the new investment both showed an increasing recognition of the value of brain research and profiling as an emerging sector.

"There is a large amount of interest over a lot of markets now -- sports, military, educational, corporate -- and the sector is being recognised as a substantial and growing one," he said. "In fact, we think that in the next decade [brain resource data] will rival the human genome when it comes to the variety of services and applications that will come out of it."