Co-founder and CEO, Incyte Pharmaceuticals Inc. AGE 44 ADDRESS 3174 Porter Dr., Palo Alto, Calif. BIO Whitfield is used to being
a big fish. The second student from the small railway town of
Crewe, England, ever to be accepted to Oxford, he majored in math
"because it was fun" and still had time to be captain of the
soccer team and head of the student union. At 23 he was one of
two international student scholarship winners at Stanford getting
his M.B.A. Now Incyte, the business Whitfield co-founded in 1991
with Randy Scott ("He was the science guy, I was the business
guy") is the only profitable biotech company of its kind thanks
to strong growth in sales of its digital equipment: databases and
software designed to interpret raw dna data; and microarrays, or
dna "chips" used in genetic screening. 1998 POWER PLAY In May
Incyte struck a huge deal with leading agricultural-biotech firm
Monsanto, and in August announced it would join the race to map
the human genome with its acquisition of Hexagen, a leader in
this area based in Cambridge, England. The new unit will focus on
genetic variations, Big Pharma's bread and butter. PLACE YOUR BETS Incyte is considered one of the most attractive long-term
buys among biotech stocks, with steady 60% earnings increases
expected over the next few years.
