Quintiles, the world's largest provider of services for the biopharmaceutical industry, plans to take advantage of the improving financial markets by borrowing $2.43 billion.

The money will allow the Durham-based company to refinance $1.7 billion of existing debt with better terms and raise new capital for various purposes, including possible acquisitions or other deals.

"Current financing terms are attractive, and banks are looking to invest in the right companies," said spokesman Phil Bridges. "We believe Quintiles is seen as a safe bet to execute this type of transaction because we have a strong track record of performance."

Quintiles is benefiting as pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies seek to cut costs and farm out more duties to contract companies. That includes running clinical trials of experimental drugs, sales and marketing of new medicines, and more.

Drug-research company Quintiles laid off a small number of employees this week, although a spokesman for the private, Durham-based corporation declined to disclose details.

"I can confirm that we implemented a very small employee action this week," spokesman Phil Bridges said in a prepared statement. "While we are making necessary changes in certain areas, we will add resources where they are needed to fuel our growth."

Reached by telephone in China, Bridges declined further comment about how many jobs were cut and where.

A private-equity firm started by former Quintiles executives is seeking to raise $500 million to invest in health-care companies.

NovaQuest Capital Management has attracted $177 million as of this month, the Raleigh-based firm reported in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The firm's directors include Ron Wooten and John Bradley.

Wooten and Bradley previously helped run the NovaQuest division of Durham-based Quintiles, which invested money in other companies' promising experimental medicines. Now NovaQuest Capital has licensed that name from Quintiles, and Quintiles is a minority investor, said spokesman Phil Bridges.

Several of the Triangle's most successful corporations also rank among the country's largest privately owned companies.

In Forbes latest annual list, which is based on annual revenue or estimated revenue, Quintiles of Durham comes in at No. 133 with $3 billion. Raleigh-based General Parts, owner of the Carquest Auto Parts chain, is No. 148 with $2.79 billion. And Cary-based SAS is No. 188 with $2.31 billion.

While such lists might seem irrelevant, they give companies exposure that can help win new customers and recruit new employees.

Forbes also has a profile of Quintiles founder and CEO Dennis Gillings. The story trace the history of how the UNC Chapel Hill professor, a "30-year-old Brit with longish hair and bushy sideburns," got the idea of handling clinical drug research for big pharmaceutical companies in 1975, founded Quintiles in 1982 and expanded it to become the world's largest contract research organization.

The founder and CEO of Quintiles Transnational might consider another IPO, as the global financial markets improve.

Dennis Gillings told Bloomberg News in a phone interview from Australia that an initial public offering of stock would allow his Durham-based company to raise money to expand in Asia.

An IPO would help fund acquisitions in that region, which is increasingly important in Quintiles' business of conducting clinical trials of experimental drugs. Quintiles, which is the world's largest pharmaceutical services company, has nearly tripled its staff in Asia over the past decade, while worldwide employment has risen 50 percent.

"Investment bankers almost hound me to do" an IPO, Gillings told Bloomberg.

Quintiles, the Durham-based drug-research firm, has hired a new executive to oversee its financial health.

Kevin K. Gordon, left, succeeds current chief financial officer Mike Troullis, who will remain with the private company and manage its investments.

Troullis became CFO in 2006 but made clear he didn't want to remain in that role indefinitely, said Quintiles spokesman Phil Bridges. Company founder and CEO Dennis Gillings asked Troullis, who has been at Quintiles 18 years, to remain with the company.

Gordon, 47, most recently worked as CFO at Teleflex Inc., a publicly traded medical-device company with $2 billion in annual revenue. He will relocate to North Carolina from Pennsylvania. Today was his first day at Quintiles.

About 100 Quintiles executives from around the world gathered last week at the Umstead Hotel in Cary to map out how one of the Triangle's most successful corporations plans to get even bigger and richer.

The Durham-based company this morning announced a new strategy to provide a wider array of services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The plans also include a new logo, marketing campaign and tagline, "Navigating the New Health."

The goals include expanding Quintiles' partnerships with customers to tackle more of the duties involved in developing new medicines, getting approval from regulators and marketing to patients. The company plans to invest more money in clients' experimental drugs early on, creating more risk but bigger potential rewards when successful.

The expanded role comes as drug makers look to cut costs and offset slowing sales by farming out more services to contract research organizations like Quintiles.

"We're just trying to meet their new needs and address the transformation going on in biopharma," said chief operating officer John Ratliff. "We started off trying to be the right hand of pharma. Now we're the right arm of pharma and we want to be a full partner."

Quintiles Transnational is selling $525 million of debt, more than the Durham drug-research company had expected.

Some of the money will be used to pay a dividend to Quintiles' private-equity investors, including Bain and TPG Capital.

And some money 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 initially expected to raise $400 million in senior notes, according to analysts with debt ratings firms.

Dennis Gillings founded Quintiles in 1982, while he was working as a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. He took the company public in 1994 and then led a group that bought it back and took it private in 2003.

Bain and TPG were among the investors that bought out another investment firm's stake in 2007.

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, left, 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.

Quintiles Transnational, the world’s largest pharmaceuticals services company, expects to rapidly expand its business in Asia over the next five to 10 years as rising incomes in the region spur "dramatic" growth for new medicines.

In an interview with the Financial Times in Singapore, CEO Dennis Gillings said that Durham-based Quintiles has expanded strongly through the global economic slump because big pharmaceutical companies have stepped up efforts to cut costs by outsourcing sales and research.

Gillings, a former UNC-Chapel Hill professor who founded Quintiles more than 25 years ago in a trailer, told the newspaper that the company's Asian business will increase from a fifth of its global total to 25 percent within two years, and then to a third in five to 10 years.