The proceeds of the £35m (€43.3m) minority equity investment will be used to strengthen the company’s growing market position in Europe and North America, with the company already in discussions with a number of acquisition candidates.
Quotient has a short, but extremely acquisitive history, having bought up four UK based laboratory service providers since its inception at the start of January 2007.
The acquisitions have enabled the company to amass over 240 employees and budgeted revenues of over £20m a year.
"Quotient has recently undertaken an ambitious expansion program, establishing one of Europe’s leading drug development services groups. We are also major players in the drug surveillance and blood-typing reagents markets,” said Paul Cowan, CEO of the firm.
“Completion of this investment will enable us to continue funding growth through synergistic acquisitions and organic growth in our existing core businesses. We look forward to working in partnership with TA Associates to achieve this ambition.”
Quotient launched in January 2007 with the £20.25m acquisition of HFL Ltd., marking the start of the company’s strategy of building a group of businesses focused on providing high quality analytical and safety evaluation services to the healthcare, pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors.
In August 2007, Quotient added to HFL’s expertise in providing drug evaluation and drug testing services with the acquisition of blood typing expert Alba Bioscience.
Then in September, the rapidly expanding company bought microbiology and molecular biology services provider, GRM.
This was followed by the acquisition of BioDynamics Research, a specialist provider of metabolism, bioanalytical and radiochemistry services to the world-wide pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, in February this year.
In May, Quotient announced it was consolidating its HFL, GRM and BioDynamics drug development services businesses under the name of Quotient BioResearch and renaming the parent company Quotient Bioscience Group Limited.
The sports testing and research business of HFL was renamed HFL Sport and Science, while Alba Bioscience diagnostics reagents business would remain unchanged.
At the time of the reorganisation Cowan stated the firm was still looking to extend its market position through further acquisitions, and TA Associates has now bought into this vision.
“We are pleased to complete an investment in Quotient at this exciting stage in its development,” said Jonathan Goldstein, a managing director at TA Associates and now a board member of Quotient Bioscience.
“The exceptional quality of Quotient’s services and superior management coupled with TA’s long history of helping companies grow and expand should allow Quotient to continue its impressive growth trajectory.”