Quintiles, IMS Health Completes Global Merger

The global merger between pharmaceutical solutions giant Quintles and top drug market researcher IMS Health has been successfully completed on Monday (03 October), creating the world’s largest information and tech-enabled healthcare service provider. The boards of IMS Health Holdings and Quintiles Transnational Holdings had announced their decision for an all-stock merger of equals transaction between the two in May, 2016.

With the merger, the entity has been renamed as Quintiles IMS Holdings Inc., and would be known as QuintilesIMS. Shares of IMS Health were halted from trading today on the NYSE. Under the terms of the merger agreement, at the effective time of the merger, each share of IMS Health was automatically converted into 0.3840 of a share of Quintiles stock, the QuintilesIMS said in a Monday statement.

QuintilesIMS, listed in NYSE, will be world’s top integrated information and technology-enabled healthcare service provider wand its services will remain dedicated to helping its clients improve clinical, scientific and commercial results. The combined entity now employs approximately 50,000 employees with operations in more than 100 countries including India.

Since Quintiles and IMS Heath have significant presence in India, the country will prove one of key markets for the combined entity where it can optimise the operational synergies.

“This combination addresses life-science companies’ most pressing needs: to transform the clinical development of innovative medicines, demonstrate the value of these medicines in the real world, and drive commercial success. We are bringing together two best-in-class leaders. I’m confident that together we will make our clients even more successful,” Quintiles’ global CEO Tom Pike had said earlier.

As a global leader in protecting individual patient privacy, QuintilesIMS uses healthcare data to deliver critical, real-world disease and treatment insights. Through a wide variety of privacy-enhancing technologies and safeguards, QuintilesIMS also protects individual privacy while managing information to drive healthcare forward. These insights and execution capabilities help biotech, medical device, and pharmaceutical companies, medical researchers, government agencies, payers and other healthcare stakeholders in the development and approval of new therapies, identify unmet treatment needs and understand the safety, effectiveness and value of pharmaceutical products in improving overall health outcomes, the company said in its statement.

Based on the closing of IMS Health and Quintiles common stock prices on May 2, 2016, the equity market capitalization of the joined companies were more than $17.6 billion and the enterprise value was more than $23 billion. The companies had reported revenues $7.2 billion and $1.7 billion respectively in 2015.

As per the terms of the merger agreement, IMS Health shareholders received a fixed exchange ratio of 0.384 shares of Quintiles common stock for each share of IMS Health common stock. Upon completion of the merger, IMS Health shareholders will own approximately 51.4 percent of the shares of the combined company on a fully diluted basis and Quintiles shareholders will own approximately 48.6 percent of the combined company on a fully diluted basis.

Ari Bousbib, chairman and chief executive officer of IMS Health, stated that, “Together our solutions will enable differentiation in the clinical research market, advance real-world evidence capabilities, and deliver comprehensive commercial solutions for our clients. This powerful combination brings together leading technology and analytics with deep scientific expertise delivered on a global scale.”