CRO Symeres will change private equity hands

Symeres, one of Europe’s largest chemistry-oriented contract research organizations (CROs), is changing hands. Keensight Capital has agreed to acquire a majority stake in the Dutch firm from Gilde Healthcare Private Equity, which has owned Symeres for 4 years. Symeres expects to have about $85 million in sales this year, split about evenly between drug contract research and contract development and manufacturing of pharmaceutical molecules for Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials, says Frank Leemhuis, Symeres’s head of corporate development and one of its founders. The company, created in 2017 by the merger of the CROs Mercachem and Syncom, has more than 500 employees, many of whom are PhD scientists. According to Leemhuis, the sale was precipitated by Gilde’s desire to exit its investment. Keensight, which already owns three biology-oriented CROs, was willing to support Symeres’s growth plans, he says. Those plans could include adding more drug discovery capabilities, entering the finished-dose drug contracting field, and establishing a lab or manufacturing footprint in the US.