Clinical research organization PPD has hired a Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) veteran to become its new CEO.David Simmons brings 15 years experience at the world’s largest pharmaceutical company to PPD, which is one of the largest CROs in the pharmaceutical services industry. The CEO post became vacant after PPD was taken private in a $3.9 billion acquisition [...]

PPD routinely strikes strategic partnerships with pharmaceutical companies. But the clinical research organization has entered a different kind of partnership in Scotland with the goal of streamlining the clinical trials process and speeding the regulatory process for new therapies.Wilmington, North Carolina-based PPD has entered an alliance with the National Health Services’s Research Scotland (NRS), the [...]

$3 million is not bad for three months work.PPD CEO Ray Hill has stepped down from the clinical research organization a week after PPD’s acquisition by The Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman was finalized. He departs with a $3 million severance package for running the company since September.But it could have been more. Had [...]

The Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman have completed their $3.9 billion acquisition of PPD (NYSE:PPDI).The private equity firms announced the completion of the all-cash deal for the clinical research organization today. The close follows an approval vote from shareholders last week. At the Nov. 30 shareholders meeting at PPD’s Wilmington, North Carolina headquarters, 75.6 [...]

PPD (NYSE:PPDI), among the largest clinical research organizations in the industry, is on its way to becoming a private company.Shareholders voted to approve the $3.9 billion sale of the Wilmington, North Carolina-based CRO to private equity firms The Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman. PPD said that more than 96 percent of shares voting at [...]

PPD (NYSE:PPDI) will have no other acquirers trying to top the $3.9 billion bid for the clinical research organization from private equity firms The Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman.Just one party entered into the same confidentiality agreements that Carlyle and H&F agreed to in order to begin acquisition talks with the CRO. But according [...]

Days before PPD‘s (NYSE:PPDI) $3.9 billion sale to private equity was announced on October 3, the clinical research organization’s lead independent director, Ernest Mario, was busy trading e-mails and phone calls with The Carlyle Group in an effort to improve what had become a substantially reduced offer.Carlyle and Hellman & Friedman, the other private equity [...]

PPD‘s (NYSE:PPDI) $3.9 billion sale to The Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman offered shareholders of the clinical research organization a nearly 30 percent premium over the company’s closing stock price before the private equity deal was announced.But www.footnoted.com, a unit of Morningstar that looks for hidden items buried in securities filings, suggested that newly-named [...]

PPD‘s (NYSE:PPDI) founder and former CEO Fred Eshelman launched Pharmaceutical Product Development out of his Maryland home in 1985. Twenty six years later, the company Eshelman started as a one-man consultancy is set to be sold for just shy of $4 billion.Wilmington, North Carolina clinical research organization PPD announced today private equity firms The Carlyle [...]

PPD‘s (NYSE:PPDI) $3.9 billion acquisition by private equity firms The Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman is just the latest in a growing string of private equity deals involving clinical research organizations.Activity in the CRO space is being driven by its growth: the CRO business has grown and is projected to grow even more as [...]