Chiltern acquisition improves competitiveness of offerings, says Covance CEO
John Ratliff, CEO of Covance, LabCorp's drug development division, told us there were a number of factors that made the combination compelling.
“Chiltern enhances Covance’s existing customer offering to include a dedicated focus on the high-growth emerging and mid-market biopharma segments. The Chiltern team deepens our therapeutic experience, with distinctive leadership in oncology,” he explained.
“Together, the combined company will have a diverse customer base with growth potential across both the top 20 biopharma segment and the high-growth emerging and mid-market biopharma segments,” Jim Esinhart, Ph.D., Chiltern CEO told us.
Additionally, Ratliff said the addition increases Covance’s global scale, “bolstering Covance’s presence in Asia-Pacific and Eastern Europe to improve the competitiveness of our clinical development offerings.”
The combined company will have approximately 11,100 employees in the Americas, 7,100 in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and 2,400 in Asia-Pacific – more than 20,000 employees across the globe.
As Outsourcing-Pharma.com previously reported, Chiltern acquired the Japanese CRO Integrated Development Associates Co. Ltd. (IDA) earlier this year. It also opened new offices in Bangalore, India to further support its analytics, risk-based optimization, biometrics, and pharmacovigilance capabilities.
Ratliff added that the acquisition also expands the company’s Functional Service Provider (FSP) solutions with additional monitoring, biometrics and safety expertise and capabilities.
The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2017 until which time the companies will continue to operate separately. After the transaction is complete, Chiltern will be part of LabCorp’s Covance segment.
