RxCelerate acquires The Cambridge Partnership Ltd for £1.45 million as Nick Tait joins as Chief Financial Officer
Cambridge, UK and Cambridge, MA – 8th May 2018, 1pm BST
RxCelerate, one of the leading out-sourced drug discovery and development platforms in the United Kingdom, announced today it has hired Nick Tait as group Chief Financial Officer and also completed the acquisition of the biotech-specialised accounting and back-office services company, The Cambridge Partnership Ltd.
“I am very excited at the opportunity to join a rapidly-expanding business, with a growing client base on both sides of the Atlantic” said Nick Tait, who has extensive experience in high-growth environments, most recently as Finance Director at Metrion Biosciences, Non-Executive Director at Cambridge Healthcare Research, and advisor to DefiniGEN Ltd.
The Cambridge Partnership was founded in 2013, on the Babraham Research Campus, and provides financial control, accountancy, company secretarial and back-office services to the biotechnology industry.
“The Cambridge Partnership remains the only back-office services company exclusively focused on the biotechnology sector” said Dr Jill Reckless, CEO of RxCelerate. “The demands of early-stage biotech companies, investing their equity capital heavily in R&D often in the absence of revenues, requires a unique understanding of the opportunities and challenges that represents. We are delighted to now be able to support The Cambridge Partnership, as part of RxCelerate group, in providing that service to an even larger number of biotech companies in the UK.”
Dr Elaine McKilligin, Founder and Chief Executive at The Cambridge Partnership, said “The rapid growth in demand for our services is exciting. Becoming part of the RxCelerate group will allow us to scale up more rapidly to meet that demand.”
The Cambridge Partnership Ltd will remain as a separate company and brand. Existing clients will be contacted directly, but will see no changes in the services they receive as a result of the change in ownership. RxCelerate will pay up to £1.45million, including an upfront payment of £1.35million to acquire full ownership of the business. No further financial details have been disclosed.
“The RxCelerate vision has always been to provide everything needed to create and run a virtual biotech company” said Founder and Chairman, Dr David Grainger. “These young start-ups need tailored back-office services to free up founders to focus their attention on developing their drug candidates, knowing the administration is being handled properly. The Cambridge Partnership is the only service provider exclusively focused on these biotech start-ups, and we are delighted to have found the next piece of the RxCelerate jigsaw puzzle.”
Last week, RxCelerate announced the acquisition of specialist bioanalytical contract research lab, Total Scientific. These acquisitions bring the total number of employees across the RxCelerate group to 38.