Quintiles

The story of Quintiles begins with a classic case of seeing an opportunity where others saw a process. In 1974, Dennis Gillings, a biostatistics professor, began consulting for pharmaceutical companies. This side work planted the seed for what would, in 1982, be incorporated as Quintiles in North Carolina. The company was founded to make clinical drug trials faster and more efficient by managing the complex process of statistical analysis and data management for pharmaceutical clients. Quintiles grew rapidly by expanding its services to cover all phases of clinical research. This created a new category of business: the contract research organization (CRO). By the mid-1990s, the company was on a global expansion tear, making key acquisitions that solidified its position as the world's largest CRO. This growth led to a significant milestone in 1997 when the company went public for the first time. The company's journey had a few twists. In 2003, Quintiles was taken private, allowing it to restructure and focus on long-term growth away from the pressures of the public market. A decade later, in 2013, a more robust Quintiles returned to the New York Stock Exchange with a major IPO, raising nearly a billion dollars. The final chapter for Quintiles as an independent entity came in 2016. In a massive merger of equals, Quintiles combined with IMS Health, a leader in healthcare data and analytics. The new $18 billion entity, eventually renamed IQVIA, blended Quintiles' clinical trial expertise with IMS Health's vast data resources, creating an integrated company designed to serve the evolving needs of the life sciences industry.