Oxonica (http://www.oxonica.com/) will be keeping the pundits busy this week following Friday afternoon’s request to suspend trading in its shares after the formal announcement of the Petrol Ofisi deal being called off. Bad news sells, so Nanowerk immediately crowed, “The end for Britain’s leading nanotechnology company?” while taking credit for the report in the Times, which revealed the Turkish problem.

So, is it the end for Oxonica? Probably not. The Optisol business is still going well, even if it is limited to Boots as a main customer, and it does have a few more products in development. But it could run the risk of becoming yet another publicly quoted nanomaterial supplier, such as Altair, forever pumping out press releases in an attempt to shore up the share price. Private companies have the luxury of pulling out all the stops to do a new deal before anyone outside finds out, whereas public ones have a duty to disclose information that may affect their price.

After over 10 years of working with materials, my personal mantra is to avoid nanomaterials companies like the plague unless they are big enough or well connected enough to add enough value to a sufficient number of products in order to maintain a stable and growing cash flow. Oxonica is teetering on the brink, but having burned through several business strategies in the past six years and managed a flotation, it would be rash to write it off. What the company does have is good management, and that, rather than technology, is what will pull them through.

PS: If anyone is curious about why a nanomaterial company did a deal with a Turkish oil company rather than BP or Shell, Petrol Ofisi’s CEO is an advisor to the “give us all your money now or you’ll miss the nanotech boom” fund Lux Capital, which invests primarily in materials and parachute companies.

Tim Harper is contributing editor of The Real Nanotech Investor and president of Cientifica (http://www.cientifica.com/), a global nanotech consulting firm serving government and industry.