ProStrakan and Shire founder Harry Stratford has joined the board of Fastnet Equity as it looks to acquire healthcare businesses
Mr Stratford, who becomes a non-executive director at AIM-listed Fastnet, is one of the UK’s most successful life sciences entrepreneurs having built two publicly listed pharmaceuticals companies.
After starting Shire in 1986 he was its chief executive for almost a decade.
He went on to set up ProStrakan during 1995 basing it in Galashiels in the Scottish Borders.
Mr Stratford stayed with the company until 2007 when he stepped down as chairman. It was subsequently sold to Japanese firm Kyowa Hakko Kirin for £292m in 2011.
Mr Stratford, who is originally from Peterborough but has lived in Scotland for many years, was awarded an OBE for his services to the Scottish life sciences industry.
His other non-executive director roles include Neurocentrix, Consilient Health and Irish Stock Exchange listed Merrion Pharmaceuticals.
Cathal Friel, non-executive chairman of Fastnet, said: "We are delighted to welcome Harry to the Board as a non-executive director.
“We look forward to working with him as we investigate potential acquisition opportunities within the healthcare sector, where we expect his extensive knowledge and experience of the specialty and orphan drug pharmaceutical industry will be of particular value."
Fastnet recently divested its oil and gas assets in the Celtic Sea and off Morocco into a new company named Fastnet Hydrocarbon.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here