Bringing The World Home To You

© 2024 WUNC North Carolina Public Radio
120 Friday Center Dr
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
919.445.9150 | 800.962.9862
91.5 Chapel Hill 88.9 Manteo 90.9 Rocky Mount 91.1 Welcome 91.9 Fayetteville 90.5 Buxton 94.1 Lumberton 99.9 Southern Pines 89.9 Chadbourn
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

NC-Based PPD Sold

North Carolina’s clinical trials industry is seeing a major shift.  The latest example is the purchase of Wilmington-based P-P-D.

Pharmaceutical Product Development or P-P-D was acquired by two private equity firms for a whopping 3-point-9-billion dollars.  It’s said to be one of the largest private equity deals of the year.  The pharmaceutical industry outsources clinical research and testing to companies like P-P-D.  Kevin Schulman is director of the Health Care Sector Management Program at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business.  He says like pharmaceutical companies – the clinical research industry is shrinking.

Kevin Schulman: "When Glaxo and SmithKline were separate, they were two separate clients for PPD.   And Pfizer and Wyeth were separate, they were two separate clients.  As those firms merged there were fewer and fewer clients for PPD to work with."

Wall Street liked the P-P-D announcement.   Shares jumped 30-percent

Leoneda Inge is the co-host of WUNC's "Due South." Leoneda has been a radio journalist for more than 30 years, spending most of her career at WUNC as the Race and Southern Culture reporter. Leoneda’s work includes stories of race, slavery, memory and monuments. She has won "Gracie" awards, an Alfred I. duPont Award and several awards from the Radio, Television, Digital News Association (RTDNA). In 2017, Leoneda was named "Journalist of Distinction" by the National Association of Black Journalists.
Related Stories
More Stories