Quintiles to sell $400 million in notes next week

The private equity firms that own Quintiles Transnational plan to cash in some of their stakes.

The Durham drug-research company expects to sell $400 million in debt next week. Most of the money will pay a dividend to the investment firms, which include Bain Capital, TPG Capital and 3i.

Of that group, TPG helped Quintiles founder and CEO Dennis Gillings buy the company in 2003. Boston-based Bain and 3i, a British firm, bought out another equity firm's Quintiles stake in 2007. Financial terms weren't disclosed. Quintiles now has about $1.2 billion in debt.

Gillings founded the company in 1982 while working as a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. Quintiles had about $2.8 billion in revenue last year, and employs about 23,000 worldwide, including 1,400 in the Triangle.

Earlier this year, Quintiles became one of the most visible corporations along I-40 in the Triangle when it opened a new world headquarters office tower with its name at the top.

Some of the money raised selling the debt will be used by a Quintiles subsidiary, PharmaBio Development, which invests in life science ventures, reports Moody's Investors Service. That division will be spun off to existing shareholders, analysts with the debt research firm wrote.

Quintiles spokesman Phil Bridges declined to comment on the debt sale or what will happen with PharmaBio. "We don’t expect to make any additional information available at this point about our plans," he said.