Coopers & Lybrand has been retained to advise the Department of Trade & Industry on possible privatisation of the British Technology Group state venture capital business: created in 1981 as a merger between the National Research and Development Corp, which fostered transfer of technology from the research into commercial applications, and the National Enterprise Board state holding company, the British Technology Group has as its current brief disposing of the dwindling state shareholdings in companies that were brought into the NEB web in the mid-1970s, using any cash in the role of the 1948-vintage NRDC.
