California Business Minute™

Hi, I am Tim Johnson and welcome to the California Business Minute.

You are probably asking yourself what golf and biotech have in common.  This past
week the California Biotechnology Foundation provided a press release that illustrates
that the California Alliance for Golf is making erroneous and misleading claims about
California’s biotechnology industry’s economic impact in the state. The California Alliance
for Golf commissioned a study that compares the economic contribution of its own industry
with that of California’s biotechnology, winery, and semiconductor manufacturing industries.

The press release expressed the following: “The reality is that California’s 2,700 biotechnology
companies generated nearly $72.8 billion in revenue in 2006 and not the $4.6 billion cited by
the California Alliance for Golf. Furthermore, biotechnology employed 258,000 Californians
and generated more than $18 billion in wage income in 2005, and those numbers have only
increased.”

“While it’s important that all of California’s industries thrive, it’s unacceptable to make faulty
comparisons based on outdated and inaccurate data. The California Alliance for Golf’s numbers
are not up to par and we trust that with the knowledge of this information, which has been
publicly available for several years, they will take a mulligan and correct this mistake,” said
Patricia Cooper, Executive Director of the California Biotechnology Foundation.

No comment was issued by the Alliance for Golf.

I am Tim Johnson and this has been the California Business Minute.