A consortium that includes several corporate venturing units have combined to pay $430m for a majority stake in US-headquartered clinical software provider Saama Technologies.
Private equity firm Carlyle led the deal, which also featured pharmaceutical firms Amgen, Merck & Co and Pfizer, health system Intermountain, medical product distributor McKesson, Northpond Ventures and Population Health Partners.
The corporates invested through respective subsidiaries Amgen Ventures, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Pfizer Ventures, Intermountain Ventures and McKesson Ventures.
Saama has built a cloud software platform which manages and analyses data from clinical trials, on behalf of pharmaceutical and biotech product developers.
The company had raised $35m from investment firm Carrick Capital Partners in 2015 and $40m from healthcare investment firm Perceptive Advisors in March 2019.
Merck Global Health Innovation Fund’s managing director, David M Rubin, said: “Merck GHI sees tremendous opportunity in Saama’s mission of accelerating clinical trials.
“It is very exciting to be part of a world-class investment syndicate with such deep healthcare domain expertise and interest in supporting the build of scaled resources that have the potential to change the way clinical research and development is conducted.”
Sullivan & Cromwell was legal adviser for Saama while Debevoise & Plimpton performed the same function for Carlyle, which retained Guggenheim Securities as financial adviser. Fenwick & West was legal adviser for the syndicate.
