Financial crisis hits Wellcome R&D funding

Europe’s largest biomedical research charity, the Wellcome Trust, has revealed that the crisis in the financial markets has wiped £2 billion off the value of its assets base. As a result the charity’s R&D funding budget for 2009 will be cut to £590 million this year, compared to £620 million in 2007/8.

The Trust’s asset base at the close of the last financial year was £13.1 billion, compared with £15.1 billion for the previous year.

The Wellcome Trust spends only a small proportion of its endowment each year. “Therefore, despite the change in value of our investment portfolio, we are not planning major changes to our spending commitments,” the Trust said, adding, “Given that the unprecedented economic conditions affect all funders, we do expect increased pressure on our budgets and we are already seeing increasing numbers of applications, which will inevitably raise the level of competition for grants.”