BioClinica Changes Hands as CRO Market Heats Up

The market for contract research organizations (CROs) is hot in 2016. Fourteen deals have been announced so far this year, compared with five in all of 2015, 11 in 2014 and eight in 2013. The latest deal was announced on August 22, as JLL Partners and Water Street Healthcare Partners exited their investment in BioClinica, Inc. and the UK-based private equity firm Cinven stepped in, for an undisclosed price. The original investment for the global clinical trial management company, then trading under the NASDAQ ticker symbol BIOC, was announced on January 30, 2013, for $123 million (1.6x revenue and 11.8x EBITDA). That deal included the acquisition of medical imaging company CoreLab... Read More »

BioClinica Adds Compass Research

Private equity-backed Bioclinica Inc. expanded its clinical research offerings with the July 2016 acquisition of Compass Research, LLC, a Florida-based clinical research site network that has direct access to a number of specialized populations with neurodegenerative disorders and other diseases found in aging demographics. The acquisition solidifies Bioclinica’s position as a leading global research network, and the only one with investigator sites in the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia. Compass Research’s state-of-the-art facilities in Orlando have supported more than 1,300 trials and contributed to the FDA approval of more than 80 biopharmaceutical products.... Read More »

Wipro Ltd. Executes on Its Growth Strategy

Acquiring, servicing and retaining customers is now a critical part of the health insurance business. That’s why global IT and business services company Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT) agreed to pay $460 million for HealthPlan Services, a portfolio company of Water Street Healthcare Partners. HealthPlan Services offers a fully integrated business-process-as- a-service (BPaaS) solution to health insurance companies in the individual, group and ancillary markets. HealthPlan Services provides U.S. payers with a diversified portfolio of health insurance products delivered through its proprietary technology platform. It connects its payer clients to more than 40 public exchanges and more than... Read More »