Venn acquires part of French CRO for about €500k

11-Aug-2014 - Last updated on 30-Nov-2023 at 14:05 GMT

Cardinal’s performance will be under particular scrutiny as the company in the last fiscal year recorded a loss before tax of €444,000

In its third acquisition in the past 10 months, European CRO (contract research organization) Venn Life Sciences has acquired Cardinal Systems, a France-based CRO specialising in data management and randomisation systems.

Under the terms of the acquisition, Venn has purchased €200,000 ($267,000) of new ordinary shares in Cardinal and has purchased existing shares in Cardinal for a consideration of €272,780. The total consideration will be paid in cash and Venn will own about 80% of the company.

At the end of September, Venn will increase its shareholding of the company to 85% for an additional €200,000 in cash, and also has the option to control the remaining 15% of the company, though that will be contingent on Cardinal’s financial performance.

Cardinal’s performance will be under particular scrutiny as the company in the last fiscal year recorded a loss before tax of €444,000. Since then the company claims to have undertaken a significant restructuring and Venn believes this acquisition will be earnings-enhancing in its first full year.

But Venn told us that services offered by Cardinal were previously outsourced by Venn, including methodology consulting, database management, statistics, and medical writing.

Based in Paris, Cardinal will increase Venn’s capacity to bid for larger international clinical trials with an in-house full-service offering.

The acquisition follows Venn’s purchase of German CRO CRM Clinical Trials in November for €600,000, as well as UK CRO Medevol for another €600,000 in December.

Tony Richardson, CEO of Venn Life Sciences, said: “The combination of Cardinal’s IT expertise with Venn’s extensive clinical trial management experience enables us to offer our sponsors a more holistic approach to managing their trials. Our sponsors have highlighted to us in recent times the importance of having these services under the one roof and we moved quickly to find a suitable company that fits into the Venn organisation. This enhances our growth opportunities as a company as we can target a wider portfolio of studies and we have already encountered positive feedback from potential customers in anticipation of this kind of deal.”

The Cardinal team will continue to be based out of the Paris office and will work in tandem with each of the Venn offices across Europe.