CRO Clinipace moves into Asia with acquisition of Choice Pharma
With the merger, Clinipace extends its global footprint to include 20 operational offices in 15 countries, including new offices in Taiwan, China (3), Hong Kong, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, and Malaysia.
The 120 employees from Choice will be absorbed into Clinipace and Chris Wang will continue in her role as managing director of Asian operations where she will report to CEO Jeff Williams.
Asia cruical says CEO
Williams told Outsourcing-pharma.com the “amount of work in Asia continues to grow all the time and as we’ve gotten bigger as a firm…more clients have asked us to help them in the east.”
“There’s a lot of activity in Asia – 30% of new trial starts include some component in Asia,” Williams said, noting that “having that geography under our brand is critical…[as] there are challenges there in terms of approval timelines – this company is strong in Taiwan and China.”
He added: “We’ve already closed new business there and have several deals in the pipeline to leverage Asian assets.
Business over the last six years for Choice “has been very healthy,” and their focus is right now on “working with smaller companies – a lot of the mid-market clients we like to go after.”
“We began looking at our next move quite some time ago and ultimately found Choice, which is building a nice Pan-Asian presence and has a lot of similarities to us, so we decided to acquire them and augment our footprint,” Williams said.
Eastern Europe
As far as new expansions for Clinipace, “eastern Europe continues to surface,” though the company has yet to establish an office there, “so that’s an interesting area for us,” Williams added, noting this is the company’s fifth acquisition.
Together, Clinipace Worldwide will now be home to over 640 global staff. The combined company has managed over 1,500 clinical research studies and 300+ completed regulatory and strategic development engagements.
Headquartered in Research Triangle Park, NC, Clinipace also has domestic operations in Irvine, CA, Overland Park, KS, and Boulder, CO; European operations in Zurich, Switzerland, Munich, Germany, and London, United Kingdom; South American operations based in Sao Paulo, Brazil and Buenos Aires, Argentina; Middle Eastern operations in Tel-Aviv, Israel and Indian operations in Trivandrum, India.
There are no layoffs or office closings planned; and the new combined organization will continue to hire throughout the year. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
