CROFounded 1985
PPD (Thermo Fisher Scientific's Clinical Research business)
Wilmington, North Carolina, United States
Full-service global CRO offering integrated drug-development, clinical laboratory, and lifecycle-management services; now operates as the clinical research business unit of Thermo Fisher Scientific rather than as a standalone public company.
- Segment
- CRO
- Headquarters
- Wilmington, North Carolina, United States
- Founded
- 1985
- Website
- www.ppd.com
Notable facts
- Founded in 1985 by pharmacist Fred Eshelman as a one-person consulting firm in North Carolina.
- Acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific for $17.4 billion in a deal that closed in December 2021.
- Had approximately $4.7 billion in revenue in 2020 and 40,000+ employees as of 2023, operating in close to 50 countries.
- Previously taken private by Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman in 2011 for about $3.9 billion, returned to public markets on Nasdaq (PPDI) in February 2020, then was acquired by Thermo Fisher less than two years later.
Sourcing guides
Sources. This profile is compiled from public reference data, WebSearch-verified against source 1 · source 2. Data as of 2026-07-14. See methodology.
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