Why is no one writing about Liquent being acquired by Marlin Equity Partners? Sure, there’s a press release (the same press release) all over the web, but no one seems to be speculating as to why Thomson-Reuters sold Liquent (to make money? to cease losing money on its investment? it longer fit its product portfolio? they got an offer they couldn't refuse?....) or exactly why Marlin purchased it.
For those who aren't familiar with the document/information management/regulatory Life Sciences space, Liquent (its products include(d) Insight Manager, Publisher, Viewer, CoreDossier, and EZsubs) provides the software that most of the major pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms use to prepare and publish their drug submissions to the FDA and its international counterparts. Founded as ESPS (Electronic Submissions Publishing Systems) in 1993, with funding from Adobe Ventures, it initially revolutionized the assembling and publishing of documents required for new drug applications (NDAs). Though I’m not able to find precise data on Liquent’s market share, I think it’s safe to say that more than half of the large pharmas use its products for FDA submissions (industry analysts have said that as many as 33/50 of the top Life Sciences firms used CoreDossier at one time). I believe that Liquent has since lost market share to companies like Image Solutions , Extedo, and most recently Datafarm .
For those of us who are unfamiliar with Marlin Equity Partners, the company says that it:
