Stanley Capital Partners acquires Drug Safety Solutions from Astorg and Nordic Capital-backed Clario
London, January 31, 2022 – Stanley Capital Partners LLP (“SCP”), the European and US-focused mid-market private equity firm, today announced the acquisition of Drug Safety and Pharmacovigilance Services Solutions (“DSS”), a leading global provider of pharmacovigilance (“PV”), from Clario. The financial terms of the transaction are not being disclosed.
DSS is a leader in providing outsourced services to support clinical safety and pharmacovigilance commitments. DSS is headquartered in Delaware, US, and has over 2,500 staff located in the EU, USA, Japan, and India, supporting over 35 long-term clients. Services to these clients span the full range of drug safety and PV services, which involves collecting, detecting, evaluating, assessing, and disseminating data on adverse effects associated with clinical and commercial medicinal products. It also leverages its industry experience to provide advisory support on best practices in the management, sourcing and systems deployed in the safety arena. As part of this, DSS has designed and implemented a range of proprietary automation technologies, which have served as technology enablers in this space.
The themes of PV and regulatory affairs were identified by SCP as an attractive area to invest behind because of the higher volume of drugs entering clinical trials, the increased regulatory scrutiny in both clinical and commercial safety monitoring, and heightened patient awareness regarding safety. DSS provides SCP with the opportunity to build a tech-enabled platform through acquisitions, further automation, and implementation of Artificial Intelligence to address pharmaceutical companies’ needs.
Humaira Qureshi, President of DSS:
DSS is focused on continuing to deliver a high quality and growing service offering to some of the world’s largest and most advanced pharmaceutical companies. SCP shares our vision of the growth in demand for PV services and how technology can transform patient outcomes and client satisfaction to generate sustainable growth for DSS. We look forward to our business benefiting from the technology, deep sector understanding and M&A capability that they will bring.
Simon Cottle, SCP Founding Partner, said:
Our investment in DSS follows several years of deep thematic research into the pharmaceuticals outsourcing sector and marks our second acquisition at Stanley Capital as a result of that work. DSS uses its unique proprietary technology to improve quality and efficiency for its clients – a capability that will be enhanced and accelerated by our own S-Labs automation capability, organic investment and future acquisitions. We believe DSS is a strong platform with which to build a tech-enabled data-led services leader in the PV market and we look forward to working with Humaira and her team to deliver that ambition.
Rothschild & Co served as financial advisor to Clario. Robert W. Baird & Co. acted as the financial advisor to SCP.
About SCP
SCP is a European and US-focused mid-market private equity firm using research and technology to identify opportunities in the growing sustainable investment sectors of Resource Efficiency, Healthcare and Technology. SCP targets businesses with Enterprise Values of $250mn to $2.5bn or more. In majority and minority transactions, SCP partners with management teams to transform companies through growth via technology and operational change and market consolidation. SCP was founded in 2019 by Simon Cottle, James Brooks and Patrick Hargutt and has a team of 10 professionals working closely together with its Leader Network and investor, sector and technology partners. DSS represents the 4th investment that SCP has led since its formation in 2019, evidencing SCP’s strong ability to originate investment opportunities and deploy capital.
About DSS
DSS has deep expertise and experience from early phase studies to marketed products. DSS has mastered collecting the reliable evidence needed to bring new drugs and therapies to market. DSS uses technology and medically qualified professionals to support clients in their current state while planning for your strategic objectives. Their PV SMEs, comprised of both physicians and scientists are end-to-end partners for our clients, proactively advising and collaborating in designing and maintaining PV services and systems which are fit-for-future.
About Clario
Clario delivers the leading endpoint technology solutions for clinical trials. Through experience gained from over 19,000 clinical trials and 870 regulatory approvals, Clario fuses scientific expertise and global scale into the broadest endpoint technology platform to enable pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device partners to transform lives. Through Trial Anywhere™, Clario has mastered the ability to generate rich evidence across all trial models: decentralized, hybrid and site-based clinical trials. With 30 facilities in nine countries across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, Clario’s global team of science, technology and operational experts has delivered the richest clinical evidence for nearly 50 years.