Indian investors buy Radiant Research
ownership of US site management organisation (SMO) Radiant Research
as it seeks to evolve.
It has been touted by The Economic Times in India as being "arguably the first buyout led by an Indian private equity firm in the international market." Since it was set up in 1998, Radiant had been owned by a group of US-based venture capital funds and the change in ownership was partly fuelled by a desire to evolve further and gain international expansion opportunities. "This change in ownership represents a natural transition from a start-up company to an established company with the financial resources to strategically advance all of our late phase service offerings," said Pamela Spaniac, CEO of Radiant. "The new ownership group led by ICICI Venture intends to build the current Radiant platform by acquiring businesses/companies globally, thereby creating a superior business model that will have the benefits of multiple markets as well as access to cost-efficiencies," added Srinivasa Aluri Rao, director of Investments for ICICI. There is speculation that the new owners plan to particularly focus on India, a current hotbed of outsourced clinical trial activity. Under the new ownership, Radiant's present senior management team will remain in place and the firm will carry on providing its Phase II-IV clinical trial recruitment and site management services as normal from its 26 clinical research centres. Covance bought the firm's eight early-phase clinical development sites last May.
