The story
Parexel was founded in 1982 by chemist Anne B. Sayigh and businessperson Josef von Rickenbach in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its name derived from the 16th century Swiss scientist, "Paracelsus", who is credited with starting the field of chemistry.
Initially, Parexel was focused on helping pharmaceutical businesses in Japan and Germany to obtain approval for their candidate drugs by the US FDA. Parexel also published a newsletter on FDA regulatory news called the U.S. Regulatory Reporter, which was the foundation of its medical marketing division.
In 1984, new legislation made it easier to produce generic drugs, leading to a rapid expansion of the market for contract research. Parexel started providing its own contract clinical research services in 1986, growing to $14.75 million in annual revenues in 1990. In the 1990s, Parexel opened new offices in California, North Carolina, Japan, Italy, and Australia. By 2018, Parexel had some 18,900 employees with operations in 100 countries.
Parexel went public on NASDAQ in 1995. It used the funding to make a series of acquisitions, including six consulting companies, two medical marketing businesses, and three European businesses in 1998. By 2018, Parexel had completed more than 40 mergers and acquisitions.
In September 2017, private equity firm Pamplona Capital Management bought Parexel for $5 billion, taking it off the public market. By this time, Parexel had more than $2 billion in annual revenues. In 2021, Parexel was acquired again for $8.5 billion by two private equity firms, EQT Private Equity and Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
In 2026, Parexel acquired Vitrana, an AI-powered pharmacovigilance platform provider, to expand its patient safety technology capabilities.
From Wikipedia’s article on Parexel, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5