Related Professionals
Company Overview
Founded in 2000, Meta Pharmaceutical Services LLC (MetaPharm) is a Blue Bell, PA-based marketing services firm focused on the pharmaceutical industry. MetaPharm currently offers sales data analytics and reporting, direct-marketing, ROI analysis and custom programs to pharmaceutical marketers, sales leadership and their ad agency partners. MetaPharm clients include global pharmaceutical companies, such as Johnson and Johnson, Novartis, Novo-Nordisk, Pfizer and Sanofi-Aventis, and biopharmaceutical companies including Cephalon.
Situation
MetaPharm’s five founder-managers grew the company organically from a start-up to one of Inc. magazine’s fastest growing companies in 2007-2010. In order to increase this growth through acquisitions and other means, however, management recognized the need for an outside partner with experience in the pharmaceutical services industry and the necessary strategic and financial resources. At the same time, management wanted some liquidity from their investment in MetaPharm so as to diversify their personal assets.
Solution
Griffin advised MetaPharm’s founder-managers that a leveraged recapitalization with an industry-savvy private equity firm would allow them to realize significant liquidity, enhance the company’s growth prospects, continue managing the company and maintain a meaningful ownership position and consequently the opportunity to capitalize on MetaPharm’s future growth. MetaPharm retained Griffin as its exclusive financial advisor to manage a competitive recapitalization process with interested private equity and strategic partners, which resulted in numerous offers. As a result of this process, Griffin was able to structure and negotiate a deal between MetaPharm and DFW Capital Partners, a private equity firm founded in 1983 and based in Teaneck, NJ, which specializes in the healthcare-related services sector. Griffin also introduced the senior lender for the transaction, Susquehanna Bank in Lancaster, PA.
For more information on this transaction, please contact John A. Lee, Senior Managing Director, at 610.205.6106.
