Many people probably still think of UDG Healthcare as a distributor of medicines to wholesalers and pharmacists. This is where the roots of the company, which moved its stock market listing from Dublin to London in 2012, lie.
The change of name to initials reflects UDG’s evolution into a business that is hard to categorise and with no obvious comparators. The old distribution business in Ireland was sold on April 1 for €132 million. Instead, UDG provides big drug companies with outsourced services such as sales and communications through its Ashfield business. The Sharp packaging side does just that, an increasingly complex business because of tighter control of the supply chain.
This is going to get tighter again in the US in a year’s time,