Kantar Acquires US Healthcare Consultants Mattson Jack

The Kantar Group has acquired The Mattson Jack Group (MJG), a leading US based healthcare consultancy focusing primarily on the pharmaceutical / biotech industry. MJG will operate as a stand-alone entity within Kantar with Bill Mattson and Bill Jack jointly reporting to Kantar CEO Eric Salama.

MJG, founded in 1986 and headquartered in St. Louis, employs 94 people across six offices including Kansas City, London, Parsippany (NJ), Philadephia and Phoenix. All the key management including co-founders and co-CEO's Bill Mattson and Bill Jack as well as President Richard Martin have signed long term employment contracts.

MJG works for many of the best known names in healthcare, such as AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis and Pfizer, providing them with services including modelling and forecasting, strategic analysis and planning, counselling on the licensing of products, M&A planning and support, technology assessments and optimization of promotional spend and brand life extension.

In recent years, MJG has begun to generate a growing proportion of its revenues from outside the US and through the provision of multi-client products and databases such as EpiDatabase(r), Forecast Architect(r) and CancerMETRIC(tm).

Commenting on the acquisition MJG CEO Bill Mattson said 'Mattson Jack is honored to join the WPP/Kantar family. We see considerable synergy with several other units of WPP/Kantar, particularly those with important interests in the Rx pharma market'.

Kantar CEO Eric Salama said 'I'm absolutely thrilled that MJG are joining us. They are the most talented group of people operating in their field and we're excited about the possibilities of working together. Healthcare is a key area of focus and growth for us and MJG will be a critical part of that offer. Together with Ziment and capabilities elsewhere within Kantar we now have some of the deepest healthcare experience and talent available'.

Kantar is the information, insight and consultancy division of the WPP Group and includes BMRB, Millward Brown, Research International and many other leading research names.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.