BDO has advised the shareholders of Cmed Group, a portfolio company of Scottish Equity Partners, on its sale to the French Aixial Group, a leader in contact research organisation (CRO) services and part of Alten, the global engineering and technology consultancy business.
Cmed is a global technology-led full service contract research organisation (“CRO”) that specialises in oncology, immuno-oncology, cell therapy and rare diseases, and provision of data and analytic services. Cmed’s technology division has also developed encapsia ® an advanced, enterprise, cloud based clinical data system which delivers a complete solution to gather and manage multiple live clinical data sources and apply real-time data management, sophisticated visualizations, analytics and AI.
AIXIAL is the CRO division of Alten Group, a global technology consulting and engineering company headquartered in France.
The combined group now has extensive geographical coverage and is able to provide customers with a great depth and range of expertise and solutions.
What stood out and differentiated BDO for us was that they provided global presence and infrastructure, and were able to draw on different types expertise in the geographies and even language we needed, yet acted as a small advisor in terms of being attentive, flexible and personable. This was important to us being a relatively small, yet international business with a strong presence in both Europe and the US.
Right from the start their team listened carefully to understand us as individuals, our business and our needs, and were very patient and understanding during the disruption caused by the COVID pandemic. Throughout they remained impressively committed, strong and positive as we went through some long negotiations, helping us secure the transaction we wanted, while maintaining the goodwill of all parties.
We really enjoyed working with them, including their sense of humour!
David Connelly, CEO, Cmed Group
“The BDO deal team provided tremendous support and insight throughout the process and were particularly valuable in discussions and negotiations around the detail of the deal.”
David Sneddon, Partner, Scottish Equity Partners