Lisle, Ill.-based Catamaran Corp. plans to buy Milwaukee-based Restat from its parent company, Milwaukee-based Dohmen, for $409.5 million, in a deal slated to close in the fourth quarter of this year.
Catamaran is a pharmacy benefit management firm. Restat is a benefits management firm, and Dohmen is a life science services company.
Once the sale is complete, Catamaran will likely retain Restat’s name, according to Tony Perkins, vice president of investor relations at Catamaran.
“As far as we can tell, we expect the Restat name to remain in place,” Perkins said.
Catamaran also expects to retain Restat’s current office space, located at 11900 W. Lake Park Dr. in Milwaukee, and plans to retain “talented Restat employees,” according to Perkins.
“Restat has a lot of very talented employees,” Perkins said. “Catamaran has been hiring hundreds of employees per year over the last two years. We are looking for very talented people. Restat has a very strong talent pool, and we are looking to leverage that strong talent pool to help the combination of Catamaran and Restat continue to grow in the PBM space.”
Perkins declined to comment on whether the acquisition will lead to layoffs or termination of any Restat employees. Between 150 and 200 employees currently work for Restat.
As the two companies prepare to align their efforts, they are implementing an integration plan to ease the merging of their clients and business operations.
The integration plan will include input from both Catamaran and Restat so that the entities can learn from each other and “create one combined company that is stronger than the two separate parts,” Perkins said.
As Dohmen transitions ownership of Restat to Catamaran, it will place more strategic attention on its life science service offering, said Cynthia LaConte, chief executive officer of Dohmen.
“We’ve decided to exit the pharmacy benefit management business so we can focus exclusively on our life science clients,” LaConte said. “Dohmen has a long history of anticipating transformative change and building better business models to meet it, and our industry is facing a significant paradigm shift from volume to value. We think we’re uniquely positioned to help drug, device and personalized medicine companies make this transition.”
