Galen founder Sir Allen McClay has ruled out the possibility of floating his latest venture, the $600 million (€475.83 million) pharmaceutical company Almac, on the stock market.
Based in Craigavon, Co Armagh, Almac employs 2,000 people worldwide and offers drug development services to pharmaceutical companies. It was formed in 2001 with the purchase of four business divisions from Galen, a company previously founded by Sir Allen.
A fifth division was formed in 2003. All five units were this week consolidated under the new Almac brand.
Sir Allen, who is the sole shareholder in the company, is adamant that Almac will never find its way onto the stock market.
"The only time anybody needs to go down the IPO (initial public offering) route is when they don't have the internal resources to do what they want to do," he said.
"Otherwise it's madness because it takes up executives' valuable time preparing quarterly results and satisfying the needs of shareholders."
He added that he did not regret Galen's £1 billion sterling flotation in 2003. Almac provides a full range of services in the area of drug development, from discovery, development, commercialisation and production, to clinical trial services.
It is currently working with 600 companies worldwide, including all the major pharmaceutical companies and a range of smaller biotechnology firms.
Its work covers most serious therapeutic areas such as cancer, AIDS and cardio vascular disease and it says it has a turnover of £120 million.
Just over half the company's employees are based at the Craigavon site, with a further 600 based in the United States. It plans to open a new formulation unit in Craigavon this summer and a new diagnostics division in North Carolina in September. A 50-acre site has recently been purchased in Pennsylvania which will be developed into the company's US headquarters over the next two to three years.
According to Sir Allen, Almac is about "revolutionising medicine".
"For me personally it's more exciting; it's more about the human end of medicine," he said.
