Premier Research Brand Guidelines: An AIM Buy-and-Build CRO That Became a Metalmark Company

A British listed company assembled from acquisitions.

Premier Research began as a British stock-market project rather than a single founder’s clinic or laboratory. Premier Research Group was set up in 2002 as a “buy and build” business with the aim of creating a global contract research organisation offering clinical-trial management and informatics, according to HMT, the corporate-finance firm that advised it on its flotation and on its first acquisitions. PharmaTimes reported in March 2008 that the company’s chairman, Dr Peter Fellner, said Premier had come to the market in 2004 with the declared aim of building a competitive, international CRO through acquisitions. HMT describes the listing as a flotation on AIM, the London Stock Exchange’s growth market.

The acquisitions came quickly. HMT lists four deals it advised on. EPA Euro Pharma was a contract research organisation based near Frankfurt, most of whose work came from German pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. PharmData, set up in Atlanta in 1994, specialised in clinical data management, statistical analysis, medical writing and project management. Imform, founded in 1991 and headquartered in Darmstadt, was a full-service CRO with operations across Central and Eastern Europe. The largest piece was the Scirex Corporation Group, then a subsidiary of the marketing group Omnicom, which HMT describes as a long-established full-service CRO running Phase I to Phase IV trials from offices in the United States and one in Poland, with particular strength in analgesia, general medicine such as cardiovascular work, and neurology.

Those deals explain the company’s mixed accent. Premier Research was formed and listed in Britain, grew through German and American businesses, and by 2018 was described by Private Equity Professional as headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, in the Research Triangle.

Private equity, twice.

The listed phase was short. PharmaTimes reported that in August 2007 the company had received a “very preliminary” bid approach from members of its executive management, and that in March 2008 its independent directors agreed to a takeover by Pegasus Bidco, an acquisition vehicle backed by the private equity firm ECI, the financier Indigo and Premier’s own management. The chairman said difficult stock-market conditions and the reduced availability of debt funding were preventing the buy-and-build strategy from being pursued effectively. The deal, subject to legal and shareholder approvals, was expected to be completed in June 2008.

The next change of control came in November 2016, when Metalmark Capital acquired Premier Research, Private Equity Professional reported in July 2018. Under Metalmark the company went on adding specialists. In 2018 it bought Regulatory Professionals, a firm founded in 1995 in Newark, California, that gave regulatory strategy, planning and submission advice to drug and device developers; Premier used it to form a new Regulatory Services Division, led by the acquired firm’s founder.

In July 2021 Premier Research acquired Health Decisions, a Durham contract research organisation focused on women’s health and diagnostics, according to the company’s announcement as published by Clinical Leader. Health Decisions said it had a network of 500 women’s health sites and had run more than 300 clinical trials since 1989. The same announcement promoted the PremierOne Ecosystem, which Premier describes as bringing administrative, financial and patient data together in one place. The investment bank Baird, which advised Premier Research Group on the purchase, records a further acquisition, Camargo Pharmaceutical Services, and describes Premier as a portfolio company of Metalmark Capital.

The company’s leadership page today names John Ratliff as chief executive and lists a president of Premier Consulting, the advisory arm that sits beside its clinical-trial business.

How research organisations present themselves.

Contract research organisations sell a service rather than a product. Drug, biotechnology and medical-device companies hire them to plan and run clinical trials, to test compounds before they reach people, to manage laboratories and to collect and analyse the data that regulators review. Because what they sell is largely invisible, their public image is built from people, places and numbers.

The pictures tend to repeat. Corporate sites and annual reports in the category often show clinicians and patients of different ages and backgrounds talking in calm, well-lit consulting rooms; scientists in lab coats working with pipettes and sample plates; and world maps dotted with the countries and sites where studies run. Data dashboards, charts and screens are common too, reflecting how much of the work is now about managing information as well as patients.

Colour follows the same caution. Blues and greens, from deep navy to soft teal, are frequent choices in health care and research branding, usually set against plenty of white, with a clean sans for names and headings. The aim is to look steady and trustworthy rather than playful, and names are often short, sometimes initials or a single coined word, partly because many of these companies are the product of mergers.

The industry also meets in person. Large gatherings such as the DIA Global Annual Meeting and the SCOPE Summit for clinical-operations staff bring sponsors, research organisations and technology suppliers together, and exhibition stands, panels and presentation slides there are another place where these identities are on show. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company’s history and ownership, and treats every colour and typeface here as our own interpretation.

Clinical development and consulting, run largely at a distance.

Premier Research describes itself as a clinical research and development company working for biotech, specialty pharma and device innovators, and its services fall into two groups: clinical development, meaning the running of trials for sponsors, and consulting on regulatory and development strategy. In 2018 Private Equity Professional listed its areas of specialisation as including analgesia, dermatology, oncology and rare disease, alongside neuroscience, paediatrics and medical devices. Its website now also names cell and gene therapy, immunology, women’s health and work on the 505(b)(2) regulatory pathway.

The company describes its working model plainly. Its locations page calls Premier Research a primarily virtual organisation whose teams work across regions and time zones, and says it will not tie a client’s next project to a single office. The Health Decisions announcement of 2021 was datelined Morrisville, a town beside Durham in the Research Triangle.

Its website speaks in the language of journeys: the home page promises “a smarter, faster path to approval,” capability pages talk of moving “from milestone to milestone,” and calls to action read “Ready to get started? So are we.” That is the company’s own framing.

For a design guide, Premier Research shows how a contract research organisation assembled from British, German and American businesses, and owned in turn by public shareholders and two private equity groups, can settle on a single, plain voice built around the idea of a route to approval. Compare it with Worldwide Clinical Trials, another privately owned CRO from the Research Triangle, and with Fortrea, the Durham company spun out of Labcorp. For this guide we use a deep plum and soft lilac with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Premier Research’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.