The club, controlled by food tycoon Sergio Cragnotti, was heavily in demand when it floated two years ago, with the largely affluent fans virtually fighting to get the shares. However, those who bought the shares will no doubt wish they’d held on to their lira. On Friday night Lazio stock stood at just €1.812, less than half their €4.74 peak last year. Mr Cragnotti has warned of a financial fissure at the club, caused by spending more than €150m (£92m) on players in an attempt to win Serie A.Recently Lazio has started selling off its top players – including Juan Sebastian Veron, who moved to Manchester United and Pavel Nedved, who is going to Real Madrid. But this did not stop the club recording a €40.4m loss for the last financial year – 12 times previous estimates.A recent elimination from the Uefa Champions League has brought more worries at Lazio, with analysts saying the defeat in the early rounds could cost it more than €10m.Roma has fared a little better – but not much. It floated last year and its shares quickly rose to a peak of €6.67. But they have tumbled as Italian investors realised that success on the football field does not necessarily translate to the stock market and the shares now languish at €3.14.

This has not been helped by annual results that show that in the year it won Serie A, Roma made a profit of just €865,000.The City has lost its interest in football after a boom which saw nearly 20 clubs – from Newcastle United to Swansea City – offer shares to investors That boom is over In Italy, it seems it never really started.. European biotech companies face a cash drought that could jeopardise hundreds of drug discovery projects. Particularly hard hit has been the flow of market flotations. At least 20 were planned for the first half, but only four went ahead. And the outlook is even more bleak.Analysts are warning that European biotech companies need to rapidly rethink their financing plans, or face extinction. In a six-monthly report on the life sciences industry, Ernst & Young has warned that with the flotation door shut, the next opportunity to raise serious sums of money on the market could be years away. The worst hit, claims the E&Y report, were the European biotech companies, whose 15 per cent share of the global $39bn (£27bn) investment in biotech last year remains significantly smaller than their US counterparts.Meanwhile, biotech companies need to spend even more money just to survive in an increasingly competitive environment.

The completion of the Human Genome Project and the emergence of the new research areas of antibodies and proteomics have revealed massive potential for biotechnology. But they also represent huge black holes for research cash.One major drain on companies’ resources is the computing power needed to process the huge volumes of data produced during research. “Companies have seriously neglected the need for major computing power, and it will end up costing them tens of millions,” said Jeff Augen, a director of IBM’s life sciences division. That recalculation blackens many finance directors’ plans, and many European players are not expected to survive.Dr Sally Bennet, a biotech analyst at ING Barings, has suggested that one way to assess the status of biotech companies is by calculating how many months of cash they have left. Many European companies including Genset, Xenova and Neurosearch have fewer than 18 months left.In a desperate bid to survive, biotech companies are expected to adopt a variety of methods to scrape cash together. Although larger companies should find some support from private capital, those lower in the pecking order are predicted to resort to out-licensing intellectual property, joint ventures and, ultimately, a round of consolidation..

The former chairman of Non-League Media, Graham Gutteridge, has had his assets frozen after a series of irregularities emerged at the sports media company and his other interests. Its shares, traded on the Alternative Investment Market, have been suspended until the matter is cleared up.The finance director immediately resigned but the rest of the directors removed Mr Gutteridge. Last week the company stated that he had made a share sale in NLM without informing the company – an apparent breach of stock exchange rules.It is understood that a sum in the region of £1m is unaccounted for at NLM, and accountants Hurst Morrison Thomson have been pawing over the company’s paperwork to discover where it has gone. The assets of Mr Gutteridge, understood to be worth around £1.25m, have been frozen by the High Court in London. He has had financial troubles at another of his firms, Eye Group, which owns the ice hockey team the Newcastle Jesters. The subsidiary involved had not paid staff, and creditors have brought a compulsory winding up petition against it.In a separate claim, brought by investment firm Bracken Partners, a shareholder of Eye Group, the assets of Mr Gutteridge have been frozen.