Amid a tumultuous year for the British pharmaceutical industry, the government wants to boost the local life sciences industry, and it hopes to entice American venture capital firms to help. 

Representatives from the British Business Bank, a state-owned investment organization, visited Boston and New York last week to pitch biotech VC firms on new collaborations that would, ideally, bring more energy into the United Kingdom’s life sciences industry. 

They came into town with more financial firepower than in years past. In June, the British government allocated an additional 10 billion pounds ($13.4 billion) for the bank to invest in VC firms and startups in many sectors over the next few years, expanding its investment capacity to 25.6 billion pounds ($34.3 billion). And for the first time, the bank is raising a separate investment fund with money from local pension plans to finance U.K. startups. 

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