Mergers & Acquisitions in the Contract Research Organization Industry

Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,0, , language: English, abstract: This thesis deals in general with mergers & acquisitions in the CRO industry, and morespecifically with reasons for M&A, success factors during the M&A process, and whyM&A can fail in the Contract Research Organization industry.The pharmaceutical industry faces increasing obstacles in respect to the development andintroduction of new medications. That has to do with stricter requirements for admissionand sharper controls by authorities. Today, the research and development of a new drugcan easily consume more than $800 million and lasting between 10 and 15 years. Due tothese admission, money and time pressures, pharmaceutical companies are looking for analternative in the drug development process. A very popular alternative is the outsourcingor in-house working with Contract Research Organizations (CRO). Contract ResearchOrganizations are specialized in coordination and monitoring of drug developmentactivities. Due to their focus they often offer a more sophisticated and faster process.Demographic changes, chronic diseases like cancer and diabetes, and completely newcluster of symptoms demand new therapeutically treatments. The size of the CRO marketin 2012 was around $32 billion and had an estimated market growth of around 9 - 12% for2013. Increased outsourcing and allocation of R&D money towards CRO reflects a drivingforce for prospective growth. To benefit from the good industry outlooks CROs adjusttheir service offerings and strengthen their competitive situation.More and more Contract Research Organizations consider mergers & acquisitions as avital solution to achieve their objectives. Since couple of years we can observe anincreased number of deals. Large corporations can close the gaps in the internal servicepipeline and smaller firms can use mergers as a financial exit.However, many M&A activities are considered as ineffective and contra-productive forthe shareholder value - either destroy or merely add. Depending on the study, the numbersof M&A failures vary from 50% to even 80%. Possible reasons may be not enoughintegration planning and unrealistic expectations on the cost and time. The reality showsthat it is not that easy to cut costs by simple combining two departments after a merger oracquisition. Additionally, we can see that mergers and acquisitions basically not succeedduring the actual process.[...]