At the DIA EuroMeeting in Amsterdam today, Synteract, a Carlsbad, CA-based contract research organization (CRO), says it has acquired Harrison Clinical Research, an international CRO based in Munich, Germany. The combined company will operate globally as SynteractHCR, with offices in Western and Eastern Europe, Israel, Russia, South America, and the U.S.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Gryphon Investors, a San Francisco private equity firm with a stake in Synteract, led the HCR acquisition.
With a combined staff of more than 800, SynteractHCR says it will be a top-tier service provider with the scale to support large, late-stage programs across multiple clinical areas, including oncology, central nervous system, infectious disease, endocrinology, cardiovascular, and respiratory. In a statement, SynteractHCR says it plans to maintain a strong connection with “emerging to midsize biopharmaceutical companies through which a consultative approach and strong clinical development expertise provide the foundation of its customer relationships.”
The company plans to maintain its corporate headquarters in the San Diego area, led by Synteract CEO Wendell Barr. Francisco Harrison, who was the founder and chairman of HCR, will become a board member at SynteractHCR and a senior member of the executive team. Synteract COO Stewart Bieler will oversee U.S. operations and former HCR CEO Benedikt van Nieuwenhove will oversee European operations.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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