Alliance for Japanese Panel Providers

Tokyo-based firms AIP Corporation and M3, Inc. have announced an alliance - including a share transfer - to deliver global healthcare research centred in rapidly growing Southeast Asian countries.

AIP has offices in 6 countries, primarily in Asia, and gives access to consumers in fifteen countries/regions via proprietary panels and a further 30 via other deals; while M3 runs a site for Japanese healthcare professionals with 209,000 physician members, and panels totalling 1.2 million physicians in the USA, Europe, China and South Korea, in addition to survey services.

The two will now co-operate in joint construction of panels for healthcare professionals in Southeast Asia, plus a variety of promotional and marketing support services for pharmaceutical companies in the same regions as the panels. The latter will be branded with names beginning with 'MR-kun'.

The partners will also collaborate to sell M3's healthcare professional panel and AIP's patient panel.

Around 17% of AIP's outstanding shares from its existing shareholders were transferred to M3 on Friday, September 9th. Web sites are at www.aip-global.com and www.corporate.m3.com .