Statement re Investee Company

Billam PLC
11 October 2004


                                 Billam plc
                                 
                         Flotation of investee company

Billam Plc is pleased to announce that shares in its investee company, Sareum
plc (Sareum), were admitted to trading on the Alternative Investment Market of
the London Stock Exchange (AIM) on Monday 11 October 2004. Billam Plc owns c
1.9% of Sareum. The cost of this investment in Billam Plc's balance sheet is
£50,000.

Sareum

Sareum believes that it has developed a leading approach to drug discovery by a
combination of skills in biology, computational chemistry and high-throughput
chemical synthesis. The Directors believe that Sareum has created an approach
capable of reducing by up to half the time it takes to discover drug candidates
for pre-clinical and clinical trials.

Sareum intends to create value through generating successful drug candidates
which it intends to out-license to, or partner with, pharmaceutical companies at
the Phase I or Phase II clinical trials stage. In addition, the Company will
offer services for fees. These services will include protein structure
determination, chemical library synthesis and structure-based drug discovery
project support.

For further details:

Billam plc Angus Forrest - 020 7336 1300
Bishopsgate Communications - Maxine Barnes / Dominic Barretto 020 7430 1600




                      This information is provided by RNS
            The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
            FFLALFFE