Blackstone is buying a company that helps drugmakers run clinical trials in Japan, adding to growing interest from private equity firms in the health needs of the nation’s aging population.
The world’s largest alternative asset manager said it agreed to purchase 60% of Tokyo-based CMIC, a contract research organization, in a deal that values the company in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Blackstone and peers like Bain Capital have been increasingly active in Japan’s life science sector amid a wider buyout boom in the country. Recent regulatory changes in Japan to ease "drug lag” — the delay of a medicine’s availability in certain countries due to the need to run local clinical trials — have made pharmaceutical deals more attractive.
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