Juho Evasoja, CEO of SBW explained that: “4Pharma will give us a foothold in clinical drug trials. The company has high level of expertise, an established client base and various on-going projects.”
Based in Turku, Finland, 4Pharma was established in 2002 and has an extensive business network in the Nordic region including a subsidiary in the Swedish capital Stockholm that has also been purchased by SBW.
Evasoja said that the deal will also pave the way for 4Pharma to enter more international markets, including the expanding Indian clinical trial sector where SBW does much of its contract development business.
”India has attracted already the majority of the large international pharmaceuticals and biotechnology contract service companies, and the market is expected to grow rapidly. We are able to benefit from the high level of expertise in computer sciences, mathematics and chemistry that exists in India,” continued Eväsoja.
SBW is a joint venture between the University of Helsinki, Finland and the Pune, India-based ToolTech that was formed in 2007 to leverage both institutions bio-informatics expertise.
In the past two years, SBW has completed five acquisitions in addition to the 4Pharma deal and plans to continue buying firms as part of its growth strategy. Speaking recently with India’s Economic Times Newspaper SBW chairman Atul Khanna said that the firm is “looking at [other] big [deals], an acquisition each in Cambridge and in Munich,” but did not provide any further details.