The merger was initially announced in May of this year, with new senior management roles announced in late August.
Today, IMS Health shares were halted from trading on the NYSE and will no longer be traded.
Per the merger agreement, each IMS Health share was automatically converted into 0.3840 of a share of Quintiles stock at the time of the merger.
“The merger is intended to accelerate growth in the combined company,” Phil Bridges, senior director, Corporate Communications, told Outsourcing-Pharma.com. “The portfolios of the two companies are complementary and there is little overlap in the service portfolios.”
According to Bridges, as QuintilesIMS the two companies would have had combined 2015 revenues of $7.2bn, a combined equity market capitalization of approximately $19bn, and an enterprise value of approximately $25bn.
“The new company will combine extensive healthcare information, technology and services solutions to drive efficiencies across the entire life science product cycle from R&D through commercial operations,” said Bridges.
IMS Health’s information assets include more than 15 petabytes of encrypted and secure complex healthcare data, more than 500m anonymous patient records, and more than 85% coverage of global pharma sales, according to the company.
Bridges said client response has been “overwhelmingly positive as they recognize the benefits the merger of these two very diverse, but complementary companies represent.”
However, there has been some hesitation from industry analysts. As Andrew Schafer, President at Industry Standard Research (ISR) previously told us, the integration of both companies’ data will be one of the key success factor to the merger. He expects the merger to “shake things up” as the pace of change in the CRO industry continues to increase.