Venn, a European contract research organization (CRO), shilled out €600,000 ($810,000) for CRM Clinical Trials based in Rheinbach, Germany, and will acquire the business, infrastructure, personnel, and client contracts of the firm who last year reported revenues of around €1.2m.
“CRM’s service offering is highly complementary to Venn’s and they bring additional areas of expertise,” CEO Tony Richardson told Outsourcing-Pharma.com. “There is also a shared key strategic client.”
He continued to say “growth through acquisition is a key part of [Venn’s] initial growth phase” and the firm is currently “engaged with a number of acquisition opportunities.”
“Current trends suggest that more business is multi-centred / international,” he continued. “In order to be competitive and meet client requirements it is essential that we broaden our foot print and deepen our service capability.”
European ‘Union’?
Venn has added Germany to a list of countries it now has operations in, along with France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Russia, the UK, and a branch office in Switzerland.
With the larger-sized CROs extending their range globally, we asked Richardson if confining itself within Europe brought up any challenges in regards to both clinical trials and business growth.
“Europe remains a reassuringly complicated, but essential place in which to conduct clinical trials and we plan to expose that reality for our benefit,” he said.
“Venn is positioned as ‘expert in Europe’ and our near term objective is to give the highest level of credibility to that statement, through full regional coverage and full service capability.”