Nycomed Amersham, the UK biotech company, has brought in four heavyweight banks to run the US listing of APBiotech, its life sciences unit, but left its traditional house banks on the bench.

The firm has appointed Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Goldman Sachs, Salomon Smith Barney and JP Morgan Chase as joint global co-ordinators of APBiotech's listing on Nasdaq. This is an unusually large number of top tier banks for an IPO which is expected to raise around $400m (€456m).