"It is not a great, great sector like it once was.
Its greatest sector weighting is financials at 29 per cent and its key regions are the Americas at 39.5 per cent and Europe ex-UK at 35.7 per cent.
Nanotechnology research is booming worldwide, and the general belief is that medical and biological applications will form the greatest sector of expansion over the next decade, driven by an attempt to bring radical solutions to areas of unmet medical need.
Likewise, greater public sector procurement would help entrepreneurs in this sector.
A new private finance initiative with a greater public sector role is part of this process.
With those caveats, however, Brown is upbeat about the potential benefits of greater public sector transparency.
But Justice secretary Chris Grayling remains convinced that greater private sector involvement will make probation a more effective service.
Dr Kailash Chand of the British Medical Association BMAA) warned this could lead to greater private sector control over the NHS.
The position, made public by the country's finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, would probably mean a greater private sector involvement than that deemed acceptable by the European Central Bank.
