Battlefield inventions can become commercial winners and are providing a fertile hunting ground for a well-connected business

WITH THE WAY STOCK markets have behaved during the past couple of years, investors could be forgiven for being up in arms. Now British military scientists and boutique fund house Circus Capital are teaming up to offer an intriguing diversion to equity misery.

In the wake of the United States' September 11 attacks and anthrax scares, some of their joint-venture civilian projects under development look timely. One cuts down testing food for bacteria to a matter of three hours instead of up to a week, while another can perform rapid tests on DNA.

At the centre of one of the fund management industry's more unusual offerings is Briton Harvey Boulter.

During a hectic career as an investment banker he developed an aerospace and defence expertise with Swiss giant UBS Warburg. Among his deal credits were the merger of British Aerospace and GEC's defence interests, the formation of EADS, the Airbus corporate vehicle, and the sale of F-16 fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates.

Mr Boulter became the only one of 20,000 British employees of UBS with high-level clearance to the country's military establishments.

'It is extremely rare to find a finance person with this kind of security clearance,' he said.

It was not a job for the type of person who sits around in the office. Mr Boulter estimates he made 300 flights in 1999. Towards the end of the year he went down with pneumonia on the Cayman Islands.