Dennis Gillings
JOSEPH MOSNIER: [This is] an interview with Mr. Dennis Gillings of Quintiles
Transnational Corporation at their offices in the Research Triangle in North Carolina.
My name is Joe Mosnier. This is cassette 6.10.99-DG. This interview is being conducted
for the Southern Oral History Program's series, North Carolina Business History. Thank
you very much for sitting down with us for the series. I appreciate that. Let me ask you,
just to open, if you could give a quick sketch of your [life], even reaching back say to
where you were born, childhood, how you ended up those years later teaching at Chapel
Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS: I was born at the end of the Second World War in London,
England and was educated in the inner city of London through to the age of eighteen.
Then I attended the University of Exeter. Actually, starting at the age of nineteen, I
attended the University of Exeter in the southwest of England reading mathematics for a
bachelor's degree. From there, I went to the University of Cambridge to do the
equivalent of a Master's degree in mathematical statistics. It was actually called a
diploma in mathematical statistics. Then I returned to Exeter as a faculty member, doing
my Ph.D. at the same time. Subsequent to that, I came to the University of North
Carolina here at Chapel Hill initially as an assistant professor and then rising through the
ranks. I made a full professor, if I recall [correctly], in 1980. My corporate life had
started in a consulting role before that-.
JM: Can I jump in with that? Let me ask just a little bit more--. Anything in
particular that you would think - taking the measure from today's distance — was
especially significant about your family, about early influences or mentors that would
have some substantial role in making you the man that you are?
Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 DG: Yeah. I've been asked that a lot. I always find it difficult to pinpoint people.
There were a couple of people at the University of Exeter that had a considerable
influence on me. One was Professor John Ashford who was the professor of statistics
because he suggested I should go to the United States. That led me ultimately to come to
here. Another was a physician, Dr. Norman Pearson, who was my boss at the Institute of
Biometry and Community Medicine while I was at the University of Exeter doing my
Ph.D. I was working as a faculty member for him in this institute. So those two people -
he being an epidemiologist and Professor Ashford being a statistician, did have some
influence. Ashford guided me, actually, to the United States.
JM: What's the specific story about how this Chapel Hill position came to your
notice?
DG: Well, it definitely came out of the blue. In fact, it was John Ashford who
came back from a tour of the United States. He was giving a lecture tour. It was just
prior to my taking, if you like, a leave of absence and making a journey across Africa by
Land Rover. He said to me, "Would you like to work in the United States?" I didn't
really know what to say because I hadn't thought really of that. Apparently, he'd given a
lecture at University of North Carolina here at Chapel Hill and the chairman of the
Department of Biostatistics, who is Dr. Bernie Greenberg, had identified a position that
he'd been searching for for between one and two years and had been unable to find within
his department. Apparently, I fitted the bill. So, that came out of the blue. I did then
meet Dr. Greenberg in Germany about a month later, or maybe just a couple of weeks
later, at some professional meetings for statisticians. As a result of that, [I] got offered a
job, which I turned out to accept at the conclusion of my African sojourn.
2 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 JM: Had your ambition been and was it then to be an academic?
DG: No. Sometimes that makes me uneasy. I found earlier on, I didn't know too
well what I wanted to do. I was reasonably good academically, and I feel I followed my
nose. You do well in school and you go to the university, and you do well at bachelor's
and you go on. Then a decision time comes and then, in this case, I was carrying on.
Then someone was offering me a job that was very attractive - certainly by English
standards because the salaries of professors, even though they may be modest in an
American environment, were very substantial relative to the British environment as it
existed then.
JM: What were your impressions of Chapel Hill, when you arrived, as a place to
live and a place to begin building a career?
DG: Well, it was certainly a beautiful place. I had a little difficulty relating to it.
I was definitely from London and enjoyed larger cities, and I suppose I hadn't really
thought [about] what I was coming to. Back in 1971, this was a pretty rural area. The
Research Triangle, as we know it today, hadn't really developed. It didn't seem at all
like--. My only sort of contact of the US had been through the movies and things like
that, so it seemed vastly different. Back in those days, although I did a lot of travel, there
wasn't quite the interaction that goes on today. So, I think there was a less clear picture
of what another country was like.
JM: Obviously your thoughts and professional time were given over to work at
the University, did it seem — as much as you can recall — a place that was in a very
dynamic period of its economic history?
3 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 DG: That wasn't clear to me then. It became clear to me as I saw a lot of
companies building up in the Triangle, and I saw the universities continuing to expand.
Also, the airport and road systems expanding far quicker than I'd ever experienced in the
past. So, I believe by about the early '80s, I had really recognized that. But, I would say
that during the 70s, it certainly wasn't so obvious to me.
JM: How about your sense of the state's political regime in those years?
DG: Generally, whichever party was in, I felt very positive because they were
very supportive of education, it seemed to me. It did seem that North Carolina had made
a big investment in education. I was very much positive to that, very much so. So, I
found each successive governor pretty attractive from my point of view.
JM: Jim Hunt would've been serving his two terms in those eight years after you
arrived, 72 to '80.
DG: That's right.
JM: Before giving way to Jim Martin.
DG: Well, Holshouser-
JM: Oh, I beg your pardon. You're exactly right. Holshouser was 72, 76 and
then Jim Hunt.
DG: And then Jim Hunt, that's right.
JM: Indeed. Indeed. Holshouser the first Republican governor of North
Carolina.
DG: That's why I said both parties. When I first came, it was Bob Scott,
Governor Scott, if I remember.
JM: That's right.
4 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 DG: I was fortunate, a bit fortunate, to meet all of them. So, I do remember them
as individuals.
JM: Anything especially noteworthy in this context of your early few years at this
university?
DG: One thing, I have to mention Bill Friday, which is part of the reason that I'm
at this interview. I distinctly remember Bill Friday as the president of the university
system and he would always say hello to you. In particular, he always said hello to me. I
was always impressed with that because he said it definitely as though he recognized me.
He may have had a talent to do that, but it seemed very genuine. I couldn't have been
more please when he always, every time I passed him, he said hello and it was very nice
feeling. He's a wonderful man.
JM: Tell me about this call out of the blue, as you previously described it, from
Hoechst in 75.
DG: Yes. Well, there was a statistician at Hoechst that made the call, and he
happened to have gone to school with Professor Gary Koch, that's spelled K-O-C-H.
Gary was the co-founder of Quintiles with myself and a strong colleague of mine at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Apparently Ken had asked Gary's advice
about someone who might do a specialized piece of consultancy on a study. As a result
of that conversation, the statistician at Hoechst called me, and so to me this came out of
the blue. The problem roughly as follows, fifty-six people in the then West Germany had
died while at the same time they were on a drug that was for diabetes. It was an oral
sulphonyl urea. I think it's marketed today under the brand name of Diabeta. This
association that all these people had died, and they were at the same time on the drug,
5 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 was a bit damning. There was great concern that the drug should not be brought into this
country, so I was asked to write an expert report reviewing what the reasons were for
these deaths and whether there was any association with the drug.
JM: Was it that episode specifically that immediately gave rise to this notion that
there might be a wider range of consulting work available to you if you sought it out, or
how did the consulting practice unfold?
DG: I suppose. I was so successful in that particular project that until this day I
[still] don't know whether I discovered something or whether the company already knew
it. On this project, I found out that all the patients were elderly and had excretion
problems through their kidney and liver. So, the drug built up in the system, obviously,
with people that had these problems, and they died from hypoglycemia, too low blood
sugar. My recommendation was that the drug just needed to be labeled so that these sorts
of people were not prescribed the product. I think that turned out to be an accurate
prediction. Now, what I don't really know is whether they already knew that. I thought
it was sufficiently easy to find out, so that I couldn't believe they wouldn't have known it.
But, who knows? I was sent these fifty-two hospital charts in German, or fifty-six I
should say. That's all I received. So, there was a lot of detective work that's related to
them figuring all that out. Now as result of that, I suppose there was a fair degree of
positive response because the report was very well accepted and it seemed to eliminate a
potential labeling problem about the drug. As a result of that, Hoechst asked me to do
several other pieces of work. Then other companies asked me to do several pieces of
work. That was definitely the founding event of that consulting in the pharmaceutical
sector. No question about it.
6 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 JM: How did all this consulting work expand in the late 70s?
DG: By about 1980,1 might be employing about twenty students and research
assistants to help me with projects at any one time, but they would wane and lull and
surge and wane. It was by that time I realized that if this was to carry on, I would be
forever trying to find people and get rid of people. It seemed that if there was a sufficient
constant throughput, I might be able to set up a company. That's what happened in early
•82.
JM: Talk a little bit about the germination of that idea - how you thought your
way through putting a business together? Did you have mentors? Did you have models?
Were you flying by the seat of your pants? How does one do that, a university professor?
DG: I really--. Maybe it was by instinct. The only thing that I did was visit a
lawyer to find out what sort of companies you could set up. I discovered that you could
set up a company that was like an extension of your own alter ego, which was a
subchapter S. Basically, all your profits became part of your own taxable salary or
earnings. Or, you could set up a C corporation, which was a real entity that was no alter
ego. It was an independent entity, which had its own tax structure. There were different
advantages [to each one], but the one point I gathered was that a C corporation was a real
corporation with longevity in its own right. I plumped for that [one] because I thought
there would be more permanence attached to that. But apart from that, there wasn't really
any other advice, because I found the building where we would do it. I found the
business to put through the company and [I] employed the people. I did get the advice of
an accountant, obviously, to help set up the payroll system. That seemed pretty obvious
7 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 that that's what we would do. In that sense, I followed my nose, but I didn't think you
had to be very smart to do that.
JM: You stepped away, in a formal sense, from the university in '82?
DG: No. Not until '86. Then formally, not until '88. What happened, from '82 to
'86, the company began growing strongly, but since I had good staff, it wasn't a full-time
effort by me. Probalby, I would say [it was] a half time [effort] - pretty much evenings
and weekends would take care of it. So for the three years, '82 to '85,1 was easily able to
continue my professorial appointment. What then happened was I began to see the
opportunity to expand even further, so I realized that if I carried on expanding and put my
full efforts into business development for the company, then I would have to give up my
professorship. What I decided to do was take a two year leave of absence to make sure
everything worked out. That was from the period '86 to '88. Then in '88,1 did tender my
resignation.
JM: By that point I suppose business had developed well enough that it didn't
seem obviously risky a move to step away from a tenured faculty position? You felt
comfortable with that decision?
DG: Certainly by '88. I felt pretty comfortable in '86, but there's no reason to not
have a security blanket. To other people, though—. I remember definitely some
colleagues saying, "How could you possibly give up a tenured slot for something that
was risky and totally unknown?' I suppose I didn't quite see it that way because in the
University there's a lot of what's known as soft money, which is grants and contracts from
the government and other sources. I really didn't see myself doing anything much
different. Perhaps the only difference was it was one hundred percent soft money instead
8 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999
of fifty or sixty percent. But, other than that, I felt that it was similar and in addition
there weren't a lot of rules that someone else set. I could set the rules myself.
JM: Give me an example of a bread and butter project early on in that early '80s
phase.
DG: Bread and butter. Well, we had--. I remember a cancer project where there
was a drug for colon cancer that turned out not to be efficacious. But of course that was
the charge, to try to figure out if it was or wasn't. It was an oral product that you would
take, and the idea was that it got to the colon cancer quicker than if you had an injection.
So, it was quite intriguing, but never worked out. I did a variety of studies. I'm not sure
anything was bread and butter. I was pretty good at the statistical side, but hadn't
necessarily worked in each of these therapeutic areas. I can go over--. We did [studied]
depression [medication]; we did peripheral vascular disease; we did sleep; we did
anxiety; cancer, as I just said; and arthritis. All those therapeutic areas were done
certainly in the first couple of years, so none of them were bread and butter because I was
continually learning new therapeutic areas and more about the biometric measurements
that would be the outcomes for those particular diseases.
JM: How did you find key colleagues, staff? What sorts of instincts and rules of
thumb did you use to put the group of professionals together?
DG: At Chapel Hill we had lots of good students. Students always need extra
dollars, so that was a remarkably potent weapon. They would work all hours of the day
or night. We would pay fifteen or twenty dollars an hour, which was very good money.
The students would work enormously hard and get things done very productively. There
was absolutely no problem. In fact, the students used to like it because they would work
9 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 hard for a month, and they'd make a few thousand dollars, and they wouldn't have to do
anything. They'd go back [with time dedicated] solely to their studies. Now I also had
some research assistants who moonlighted. They were staff- programming staff and
other staff within the department. So, they moonlighted and that was good for them too.
JM: Tell me about building an entrepreneurial business in the mid-'80s in this
part of North Carolina.
DG: It wasn't very common, that's for sure. At least I didn't meet many other
people that did it. Maybe it was more common than I realize, what with my contacts
being mainly academic. You tend to stay often within your contacts. I suppose the other
part of that is my business wasn't all that easy to describe. We were doing what we
commonly call now "outsourcing" for the pharmaceutical industry in drug development.
At that time, for anyone to imagine that a big company like Glaxo might contract with
someone like me to analyze their studies didn't seem feasible because why wouldn't they
do it themselves? So, it was quite hard to explain. In point of fact, the explanation then
was far different from what it would be now because, I think it's fair to say, Gary and I
had a lot of skills. We probably had more skills than was present in most big
pharmaceutical companies at that time, so we were able to bring a skill level to the data
that was presented to the Food and Drug Administration that was a step up. Now a days,
of course, there's a lot more trained people and a lot more of that skill level would be
resident in the major companies.
JM: Were you ever offered the opportunity to come in house by anyone of them?
DG: Yes, yes.
JM: So people saw that as something that might make sense--.
10 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 DG: That's correct. For me, it was a much better life being a professor with the
consulting than actually working for a corporation.
JM: Why were they outsourcing? [Was it] just a matter of not having the in-
house expertise? Why didn't they go out and get it?
DG: We tended to specialize in those early years in things that were quite hard
problems. Just take the fifty-six deaths. I don't know whether anyone in the company
would've solved that. Perhaps on the one hand there wasn't the confidence. Then, on the
other hand, there's always this thing - an external person that's a professor has a
reputation and an independence that lends greater weight to the conclusion. That's one of
those inescapable things that often happens.
JM: One of the things that's interesting about this study is exploring the extent to
which a regional distinctiveness is still evident in business. Were there times that it
mattered, in your effort to put this company and develop this company here, that you
were not a southerner?
DG: Oh no. I would say almost the reverse. It's probably fair to say that my
customers more came from New Jersey, but of course Glaxo and Burroughs-Wellcome —
at that time they were separate companies — were local customers. Everyone always
thought that we entirely developed because of those companies and that was not true.
The genesis came out of New Jersey, and then we gained other customers later.
JM: But you're selling a service, so place matters less, I guess.
DG: In fact, I often found that my English accent was an advantage. For some
reason it gets credited with intelligence. I don't know why. I get that sense in the United
States, maybe. You can judge [for] yourself whether you think I'm correct, but for some
11 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 reason when it's put side by side with a native American [accent], for some reason it
sounds more intelligent. I'm not saying that with any degree of belief. I think it's
nonsense. It's an advantage, which I think I've benefited from. Very unusual that a
foreigner can actually benefit more than a native, or at least as much as native. I was
always struck by that.
JM: Any folks who stand out from these early years, mid- or late-eighties, as key
contacts, key sources of insight or perspective? Someone who you met along the way
who offered something to think about, that ended up being quite significant or opened a
door for you or gave you some regulatory insight perhaps?
DG: Some of the people, our customers [were important]. One I remember well,
Dr. John Nelson, who was the physician in charge of clinical research at Hoechst. He
was originally from Scotland. He was very focused on the point of the study and what it
was trying to accomplish. That focus and penetration of thought, I felt was a very good
thing. I did observe that and I got on well with him, I believe. Another colleague I might
mention, who was at that time at Bristol-Myers, was Dr. Joe Armellino. He certainly
taught me a lot about the development process for new drugs. So, I did find I was
learning a tremendous amount. I came at this from a narrow disciplinary skill and
quickly learned some of the business angles, like how to focus on what the key things
were and also some of the wider angles of what a pharmaceutical company is trying to do
and how does it get a new drug on the market. That did help me then with the next
iteration of the company, Quintiles, because I figured we could really manage a broader
process than just analyzing data from an individual clinical trial. We could manage all
the databases and we could actually run the clinical trials.
12 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 JM: When did you really turn your efforts to that expansion of the services you
were selling or considered selling?
DG: Well, from '86 to '88 I put my attention at expanding the database
management and we expanded it across to the United Kingdom, so that it was
transatlantic. I did that first because I felt that Europe would become a single market.
Being from Europe or the UK, I was probably closer to that development. If it became a
single market, it would mean that drugs were developed in Europe much like they were
developed in the United States, which was not true in the '80s, so that made me decide I
needed to build a data processing and analysis capability [on] both sides of the Atlantic to
accommodate multi-national clinical trials. When that was successful, I figured that then
we could put in the expertise to manage the trials, design the trials, and monitor the trials.
So then, from '88 to '90, we began to put that in place.
JM: How dependent was that expansion on key hires at Quintiles? Did you have
to bring in--.
DG: Yes. Yes. I brought in Dr. Bob Butz who had worked for Burroughs-
Wellcome and then had branched out on his own. I was very impressed with him and so
he helped develop our clinical and regulatory capability. Also at that time Dr. Bill
Solliceto - he had been my research student and had joined the company right from the
outset — took over the management of the statistical and data responsibilities as I took on
a broader role, managing the whole company and developing the business of the
company. Bill was very influential in us making substantive progress. Then Rachel
Selisker, who is currently our CFO and has been always our CFO, she joined us in 1987.
She had been with us pretty much since 1982 because she had been the accountant that
13 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 had audited all our accounts or really reviewed all our accounts. Then she joined the
company in 1987, so she has seen every dollar pass through the company. Then there
was another instrumental person, Sarah Creagh, who I brought in to manage the human
part of the business. This was an interesting story because we had a bunch of techies -
you know, programmers and statisticians. They saw everything as very tangible
scientific technology type things. When I proposed that Sarah come in as the heart of the
business, rather than the scientific structure of the business, people couldn't understand
what she would do. But that proved to be an immensely valuable appointment. That was
the case. There was also Sid White. I would like to mention him. Sid White had joined
us from the very earliest stage. He was an expert programmer and was able to, it seemed
to me, program anything and make any data analysis work. He was very instrumental.
JM: So there certainly was a connection to the university through folks—
DG: Absolutely. Yes, because of those people. Bill and Sid came directly from
UNC-Chapel Hill. A number of people [also had university connections], though.
Connie Morreadith, my secretary Bea O'Quinn, came out of the university. They had
either worked for me there or had moved onto other things and then came back.
JM: How easy or not was it to begin managing all of the business side rather than
the service provision side of a growing business? Did it suddenly start eating up all of
your time or were you able to—
DG: When it started eating up all of my time is really when we became
international because I needed to be both sides of the Atlantic at the same time. That did
transform everything into very high demand. No question about that. I probably
expanded internationally more quickly than anyone would've recommended I did, but I
14 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 felt there was no time to lose. I calculated the European Union would come into effect at
the end of'92 or beginning of'93, 1992 or 1993. I'm blocking a little bit when it was. I
wanted to be there five years before that, so that was sort of by '87. In order to get the
full five years in, we had to be starting up there. We accomplished that. We started up in
the middle of '87, but we were really viable by the beginning of '88. So, we did have five
years before the European Union came about. To me that was important because that
was sort of roughly the same amount of time that the company'd been developed so far in
North Carolina. I felt we'd need the same amount of time to replicate it and may even
need longer because it was at a distance.
JM: Before we turn to the many issues related to international expansion, what
was your—. Here you are some years after having been working as a professor, you're
running a growing and dynamic business. Did you suddenly have to pay attention to tax,
fiscal, regulatory issues?
DG: Oh, yes.
JM: All that stuff. I'm wondering two things. One, whether or not the discoveries
you made and encountering all these things that were suddenly on your plate, how that
matched up against the perspectives you'd carried forward both as somebody who came
over from England and somebody who'd worked in the academy - that sort of academic
consideration versus practical. And also--. Well, let me just leave that with you.
DG: I actually think an education in England has some advantages because
there's a tendency to rely on a little more creativity in the earlier school years than rote
[learning] - turning back the answers to individual questions [to the teacher]. I have
noticed that as a big difference in my own education to what I see practiced here. We
15 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 didn't have too many multiple-choice tests. In fact, I rarely took any the whole time I was
at school. The normal sort of test I would take, you'd study something for three months
and then you'd end up with a question that would ask you to amalgamate everything
you'd learned about that particular topic. So I was much more used to that method. I do
think when you are really exposed to that — if you succeed well in the educational system
— you develop a certain common sense and a certain way of figuring out how to proceed
with things. I would put that [describe that] as to then how I dealt with anything. I don't
know. Let's take legal issues. I tend to address [problems] in the early stages [of] legal
issues by asking myself, "What sounds right and what sounds wrong?" I think laws are
trying to generally get at a common sense good and evil, appropriate and inappropriate. I
remember writing up my first contract and I think I did a pretty good job. It just seemed
that in a contract there are certain things that you need to specify. I felt that was common
sense. As we began writing more and more contracts, then I began to recruit the talents
of a lawyer, but I did notice that they didn't change the structure that I'd put on it much.
They just added more words.
JM: Any sense at the time that there were areas of the law - areas of the state's
tax or fiscal policies — that were problematic for you as you tried to move your business
forward?
DG: Not really. I think we were fortunate that I founded a business that was
profitable from day one. The accounting issues seemed to me to be pretty
straightforward. Since you make more money than you spend, there is some bottom line.
You have some flexibility about whether you're [doing] accrual accounting or cash
accounting in the early stages. That I was not aware of, but of course Rachel advised [me
16 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999
on] what the most appropriate tax approach to that was. So on those technical things, I
always followed the advice [of experts]. Management issues I felt were reasonably
straightforward, because I think good management really is, again, identifying the
components of any problem and making sure each one is covered and followed up. Now
with respect to Human Resources, I think because there's a lot of laws about how you pay
people with pensions and fringe benefits and all the things associated with that, that as the
company grew larger - and as we began to bring in health insurance and sort of pension
related benefits and things like that - we did need advice on how to bring that in to the
structure of the company. We recruited a Human Resources person reasonably early on,
about 1988 or '89. We put someone actually in charge of Human Resources. That made
the development of that area pretty straightforward.
JM: How big is the company in '87 or so when you began to start looking
overseas? [What are numbers on] revenues and employees?
DG: Four million dollars of revenues and about forty employees. It was pretty
small.
JM: You mentioned you were profitable from the get go. Any occasion where
you had to go out and find a bank to give you working capital or something?
DG: Yes. One of the things that I calculated early on was that if we grew twenty
or twenty-five percent annually, we were totally self-sustaining. But, as we started
growing forty and fifty percent annually, we used up more cash in capital expansion than
we could generate profits. I came to this conclusion pretty quickly, actually. We did
have to start borrowing in order to finance that cash flow. To start with, we borrowed
through bank loans. I cosigned all the loans and they were secured against my house and
17 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 things like that. As the company got larger, I think the banks were willing to continue
financing as long as all the assets of the company were put up. Then the next stage
really was to seek a little bit of venture capital. Now we weren't really a venture capital
company so much as we were at that time called mezzanine financing. It seemed clear to
me that [by] around 1990 we needed some financing like that for the main reason I've
just said. We were carrying on growing at that rate. The second reason [was] I felt that
we could then be valued high enough that we wouldn't overly dilute the ownership of the
company. So, for about twenty-five percent of the company, we were able to raise a
fairly substantial amount of venture capital.
JM: How did you go about that? How did you go looking for someone to fund
you, find the right sorts of perspective investors?
DG: It was odd how that turned out. There was a person called Epps Robinson
who was part of a limited partnership of what was then NCNB, which is now Bank of
America. At that time it was NCNB, before it was called NationsBank and then Bank of
America.
JM: I'm actually interviewing Hugh McColl on Monday.
DG: Okay. Well, at NCNB--. Sorry, I'm losing the question now.
JM: How you went about-.
DG: The venture capital. It was Epps Robinson. They had a limited partnership
and Epps Robinson sort of called me up out of the blue. It was funny. I don't know how
he learned about Quintiles, but he wanted to become an investor. That happened to be at
the same time that I was thinking we needed some infusion of capital through equity, but
I was a little bit queasy because it's your heart and soul, and you don't like to give up
18 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 these shares all that easy. I must've discussed this with Epps for six months or more.
Then I finally said, "Look Epps. I don't really want this stage there to be a big
investment in the company, but I would really like someone on our board who was
knowledgeable about financial and business matters and capital formation. I feel that if
that person had a modest investment in the company, that would be the best of all
worlds." I think the actual figure he invested was $140,000. It was very modest and it
wasn't really for the capital. It was more so that he had put some money down and then
we would value his advice. Putting your money where your mouth is. That was the
proposal I gave to him and he accepted it.
JM: This was about 1990?
DG: This was about 1989 or 1990, something like that. From there, as we were
more comfortable with that, he introduced us to people that were venture capitalists that
would put more money in. That's how that whole thing evolved.
JM: Did that tend to be a circle of North Carolinians initially?
DG: It was really interesting because NationsBank had a connection with a
London bank called Panmure-Gordon. I don't know whether they owned them or what it
was, but there was a connection. Through that connection I was introduced to Richard
Thompson of Thompson Clive. Thompson Clive was a London based venture capital
group. Since we were international, I was quite interested in that. Thompson Clive or
Richard Thompson wanted to invest, and we came to an agreement. At the same time
Epps Robinson invested more, and then there was a third investor, David Smith, who
unfortunately now has recently died. David Smith had founded Praxis, which was a
biotech company and sold that company to then American Cyanamid. Then David had
19 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 retired from that situation because he had made some money and was then looking to
make some investments. I had met David earlier because we had helped him with his
drug that he developed at Praxis. He also became an investor, so we had three different
investors that in combination raised money for about twenty-five percent of the company.
JM: You mentioned one advantage to Epps Robinson's participation was that he
could bring a certain sort of financial expertise to the board. How did you go about
putting a board together from the early stages and then how did you gauge the need for
new sorts of perspective and expertise to add to that?
DG: Well, in the earlier stages, I used valued advisors and colleagues. Professor
Chester Douglas, who had been a colleague of mine — he was at Harvard — joined our
board. Then Dr. John Fryer - who had actually been a colleague of mine back in the
United Kingdom and then he'd come to the University of North Carolina to assume the
professorship in biostatistics that I had vacated - he joined our board. Then with the
venture capitalists on the board and myself, we began to have a really viable board.
JM: Let me step out of the narrative of the company's expansion for a moment.
What instincts, what expectations guide you in finding your way into professional
business relationships with other persons? How do you hire? How do you make
assessments of people you want to have participate in your venture?
DG: Well I think there has to be a certain chemistry on the one hand. I actually
look for people that are strong at things that I'm not strong at when I'm hiring. I actually
look for people who have accomplished something on the grounds—.
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A
20 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B
JM: [This is side] B of the first cassette [of an interview] with Mr. Dennis
Gillings on the 10th of June, 1999.
DG: I don't hire from the perspective of employing a superman or superwoman
who's skilled at everything that you can possibly name. Particularly as the job gets very
senior, there's a tendency to demand someone who is skilled at everything you can
possibly think of. I'm not a believer, myself, in that. I believe that it's a little
counterproductive to what I call the team effort. I look for team players because if you've
got a superman, there's also the tendency that everyone else pays lip service to them. If
you generally believe that individuals bring key talents and skills, and perhaps other
secondary skills, you tend to look towards the people with the key talent as being the
spokesperson for that talent. That then builds a team akin to a good basketball team or in
England a good football, or soccer team as it's called here. I tend to aspire to the sporting
analogy of a good management team. Therefore, as you build some components, then
you look for the other components, and you build accordingly.
JM: Did you ever have to stop and reflect on how you were perceived as a leader
and what sort of style you have not as a leader, but a manager? Or was it a natural thing
that sort of evolved over the years?
DG: Well, the funny thing is I never really perceived myself as a leader. I also,
though, strongly believe that if you're in a role, you've then got to execute that role. I
think if I exercise leadership, it's because it's the role that was then ordained for me in
some fashion, either because I created it or—. I suppose it was possible that someone
else would've founded the company and then I worked for them, but that was not the way
21 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 it happened. Since I had the head role, I in my mind staked out those things that the
person who is at the helm should actually do. If they're consistent with leadership, well
then, maybe I've done some things right. I do think setting an example and aggressively
showing the way forward and accomplishing things that you say you want to accomplish
and people see you accomplishing things are some ingredients for leadership. They're
not the only ones.
JM: Let me turn to your evolution of your strategic vision for the company. [The
company is] incorporated in '82. By '86 you decide it's time to take a leave [from the
university] and your efforts [to the company] full time. What's the prize down there
road? What's pulling you forward? Where are you wanting to go?
DG: Well, it's changed over the course of time. I think to begin with it was this
independence and capability of having an organization that did what I thought was very
socially responsible work. You know, does a new drug work and how do you get people
better and making a sound economic living and creating nice jobs out there. That was the
original motivation. I think as the company grew though, a broader motivation crept in,
particularly as there were no financial issues. Really, I never developed a company for
money anyway. It's just that you need, obviously, some financial rewards to feel
comfortable. As we began to be successful financially, actually the part that grabbed me
was, we may be able to build a company that makes a difference. That's really what
drives me now. It's evolved from being independent to, can you make a real difference?
JM: What's the difference? What exactly do you want to accomplish?
DG: Well, the pharmaceutical sector is extremely productive in inventions.
Only, too often inventions don't get to human beings very quickly. Sometimes they're not
22 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 developed in an efficient manner, so they could fall by the wayside. What we would like
to do is bring new medicine to people more quickly and help the system of health care be
more efficient.
JM: Let me take you back-. Step back into the narrative story of Quintiles. It's
1987. It's the end of the Reagan era. [It's the] opening to George Bush's term, obviously.
There's a certain type of spirit in the air in terms of political philosophy in this country.
That has implications, obviously, for the health care environment in this country. You'd
come from another place and had a different perspective and pattern of experience, I
suppose, growing up in the UK. What measure did you take of US health care delivery
generally and in comparative terms in particular? I'd be interested in how relatively
efficient, how relatively socially advantageous—.
DG: Oh, sure. That has changed from then to now, actually. Back, let's say, in
the '80s, I think health care in the United States was a bit more expensive than elsewhere.
It also seemed as though there was less access to [healthcare] for the whole population
than there was certainly in the United Kingdom, where pretty much everyone got equal
access. Maybe very wealthy people got super access, but that was such a tiny thing that it
didn't seem to make a lot of difference. I think health care, although it remains expensive
in the United States, with managed care and the competition, is--. Probably the amount
by which it's more expensive than other countries has lessened a little bit. I don't think
that it's quite such an issue that it was some time ago. I think the fact that you only tend
to get good access to health care if you're an employed person is probably a big
difference. Generally, you have to go on welfare outside of [employment to get
affordable access to healthcare]. That big difference is so socially—. One is aware of
23 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 that. It does put a little bit of a stigma to some extent on the United States because it's
clearly wealthy enough that that shouldn't happen. Obviously, an appropriate system
can't be found. That access issue is a big difference between what I was used to in the
United Kingdom and throughout Europe and in the United States.
JM: Tell me some stories about taking the company overseas and finding new
markets and building businesses there. No small task.
DG: No. That's true. I mean, I was at a bit of an advantage, I should say, in the
UK because I came from there. It didn't seem anything other than going home. The
objective was to then build the company in continental Europe, so we could have this
trans-European capability. That's exactly what I proceeded to do. We first built it in the
United Kingdom. After that we set up in Germany, in Ireland, in France, in that order.
After that, [we set up] in several other countries and now we're present in every country
in Europe.
JM: In those early instances, are you opening new business or acquiring
[companies]?
DG: [We were] always opening new businesses. At that point we didn't acquire.
Even to this day — I think I'm right — we've always opened up in a country before we've
acquired in a country. We've never actually gone to a country through an acquisition.
I've had a specific purpose there. I do think multi-national organizations are quite hard to
build. I've always had this inclination to understand a little bit more about how business
is conducted in a country and learn, if necessary by a few mistakes of hiring people,
before thinking about making an acquisition.
24 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 JM: What was the pattern of experience you had, first in England and then you
said in Germany, France, and Ireland?
DG: I think in England it was, if anything, a little bit easier than here. Not
because it would've been easier absolutely, but because we were backed by a thriving
business. That reputation enabled one to get the work that generated the business. I think
in the other countries it evolved because of the sorts of businesses we were developing in
the United Kingdom. That tended to be trans-European and so we developed business in
Germany and therefore needed a German organization. We developed an organization in
Ireland in part because of some of the financial incentives that we were given by the Irish
government. I don't want to say this in a detrimental sense, but that was almost like an
extension of the UK. It's a different country, but English is the language. It's close. It's
less different and all the structures were pretty much the same. Starting a business in
Germany, though, is entirely different because you do get the continental Europe legal
systems rather than the Anglo-American type legal system. A little later we went to
France. That was probably the most difficult because we'd never really had a full start.
The first head of our French unit didn't work out, so we then had to replace that person.
That was an example of an initial mistake and then trying to correct it.
JM: How was the CRO sector evolving in these years, the late '80s or early '90s?
DG: Well, very strongly because the actual market itself was growing strongly. I
would estimate that the demand was growing by between twenty and twenty-five percent,
so we were growing more like fifty percent a year. We tended to double or more than
double the growth of the market. In a growing market it was less that you were taking
25 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 something from someone else, more that you were taking more than your share of the
new stuff. That's how we expanded.
JM: At what point did you take the decision to say "We will move very
aggressively in many corners of the world?"
DG: Well, once we began to be successful in Europe--. I should mention Ludo
Reynders, here, because Ludo is now the CEO of our CRO Division. He started in 1988
and was the head of the UK and then became the head of Europe and the CRO. He was
very instrumental in our success throughout Europe. I think that success caused us to
expand all over Europe and then caused us to look further afield toward the Asia Pacific
region, in particular toward Japan and other countries. Now there was another thought.
You see, pharmaceuticals is a global business and at the same time there was a movement
for intellectual property rights to be more widely recognized throughout the world. It
started at what was the Uruguay Round and ended up in the World Trade Organization.
Now generally it is thought - by at least the people that I talk to — that by about 2005
most countries in the world will pretty much recognize intellectual property rights. Back
in the early to mid-nineties I felt that the recognition of intellectual property rights was
going to have a big impact on the pharmaceutical sector. In particular, [I thought] it was
ultimately going to create a bigger market place in Asia because there was a fair amount
of avoidance of intellectual property rights [there], so there was less incentive for many
pharmaceutical companies to develop products in [those] particular countries. With that
thought in mind, which was not unlike my European Union thought in the middle '80s, it
was the rationale why Asia would ultimately become important. The other thing I
realized [was] since I didn't know Asia, instead of a five year lead time, I probably
26 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 needed seven to ten year lead time. So, in the middle '90s through to now, we started
developing in that region with the anticipation that by about 2002 to 2005 we'd be in a
strong position there. If the market had gone like we envisaged, we would be in a
position to lead the market growth in these regions. So that was the theory.
JM: How did you manage this cross-cultural bridging? It must be a problem of,
or a challenge of many facets.
DG: Well, I'd wouldn't like to say there was any great talent there [on my part],
because I don't speak Japanese or anything. I think one thing you do do is observe, and
you try to behave politely within the culture you're in. You learn a few things so you can
do that. I mean, when we go to Japan we always take gifts. I always bow and I know
when to bow a little bit or a lot and when to do it. I know the greeting. The thank you
and the apology is a successively deeper bow. Those sorts of things you don't have to
spend a lot of time learning, but I think they make a very big difference. I think the other
thing you must be careful of, is not assume the country is your own country. You must
assume it is a different country. Therefore, you try to show respect for the cultural ideas
or prevailing ideas within that environment. That's what I do. I will take pains to travel a
little bit in a country before setting up a business there. For example, I made about three
visits to China and toured around China before we established a business in China. I
think those sort of things are important.
JM: It sounds like a fairly simple strategy, really.
DG: Yes. I don't think it's too--. It's not Nobel Prize winning. I would call it
common sense.
27 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999
JM: But there's got to be a part of this that - at least on two fronts - that's got to
be more complicated still. One is integrating overseas portions of your company into
whatever Quintiles's institutional cultural and enterprise is. That's A. B, deciphering the
particular regulatory regimes of these places. What are your strategies there?
DG: The regulatory regimes are not too difficult because the FDA does set a high
standard. That's not to say it's the only standard, but if you satisfy the FDA, you do tend
to satisfy most of the other things as a general rule. We actually work towards what we
call the ICH standard, which is the International Conference on Harmonization of
regulations across Europe, North American, United States, Europe and Japan. That isn't
so different from the FDA standard that that keeps you in good stead. I think on the
regulatory side since the US is so widely recognized as having strict regulations, we have
a natural advantage there. Now on the integration, if I understand your other question
across the different cultures and management styles, I think you have to tackle it a little
bit by--. First of all, you do have a little bit of representation from each. You have to
work at that. It's no good trying to ran China and just sending Americans there, and you
think that's sufficient. If you can't find the trained people, you may still have to send
someone there, but you have to have a strict plan to recruit and train and bring the local
nationals to the management positions. I tend to have the rule in my mind that you've got
to aim for strong local management. But I never like saying a rule that you can never
violate. It's more that's what your goal always is. Now if you do do that, I think you do
allow each country to feel it's participating. Then I think at the next level of management
where the overall corporate management is, you have to again be careful that you have
some representation that's reasonably broad.
28 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 JM: Tell me about how - in managing these sorts of processes — how your daily
calendar has evolved over the last ten years, ten to twelve years, when you really started
to--. How do you spend your time? How has that changed?
DG: Well, the biggest issue more recently is the pressure for my time. You have
to have a group of people helping schedule [your time] because you can't actually even
remotely field all the things yourself. You have to have people that are assessing who
wants to see you and trying to work out priorities and making suggestions, which you
then agree with. That's a relatively recent phenomenon. I would say that's more a
phenomenon of the last two to three years. This past year it's gotten quite excessive.
Now prior to that, something like half my time was people wanting to see me or events
creating the need for me to spend my time that way. The other half was pretty much
[what] I determined I would focus on to grow the company.
JM: Strategic thinking.
DG: So that was naturally how it tended to be. I've always been, I think, a
reasonably good delegator. I've never tried I think to overly manage the day to day
operations of the company. I've been bringing [in] good managers and generally
delegate. During the period [of], let's say, '90 through '96,1 was first of all learning how
to run a public company
JM: I'll have some questions about that too.
DG: And then we took it public and then [I was] learning how to do some
acquisitions. I think [I was] getting more skilled at integrating those and managing the
growth. More recently, I suppose in general, that was the lesson. You said "How do I
manage my time and how do I deal with it?" For those years, was all you had to be good
29 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 at was prioritization. As long as you were focussed on prioritization--. I tend to be
reasonably good at that. I don't waste a lot of time, I don't think, on social chatting or just
doing things that won't be productive to the business. The last two to three years, though,
has been somewhat different because as a company grows, I think you have a community
responsibility to a greater degree. You're also the leader of a larger group of people, and
you have to behave a bit "presidential" on occasions. If I'm invited to open a new
building in our company somewhere, I think it's only with a fair amount of thought that I
would turn that down because otherwise the company would not feel you're the leader.
So the numbers of things like that vastly increase as you're in thirty odd countries with
18,000 people. You obviously have a lot more of that. You also have a lot more need to
talk to the press and be responsible community-wise. I sit on boards and other entities. I
think, in part, because I think it's a good thing to do, but also, in part, you feel you have a
community responsibility. Your company would have a bad name and would not show
leadership in the broad sense, if you didn't do that. So these things become much more
prevalent, and you have to make much more choices; therefore, the choices get more and
more complicated. So that has been a feature, I suppose, of success and growth. That
certainly is the situation now. That wasn't true five or ten years ago.
JM: Let me take you back again to this period, say starting '87 [and] forward,
where you were really looking to move the company with a lot of overseas growth and
expand your range of service provision in many new fronts. One very interesting
question, I think, is that—. You mentioned earlier today that you were able to draw upon
the advantages of style and intellectual training, if you will, of the British system with
some general regard. That will probably be at play here in this question. I'm wondering
30 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 what sources--. Broadly speaking, what are your sources of information and perspective?
Not just narrowly, saying just within this expanding industry, but more generally. Where
do you turn? What sorts of things illuminate and advise and inform you as a business
leader?
DG: I naturally I think I store away information and analyze it as a trend. I think
that's a natural thing that I do. I also both quantify and subjectively prioritize, in some
non-objective way, all the information that I get. I think that helps identify the business
trends that should be in our sphere of influence. Perhaps there are two sorts of trends,
those that are emerging inspite of you and those that could emerge more strongly if you
did something. With an identification of which sort you're in, if they're going to emerge
in spite of you, you'd better do something about it anyway. If you could lead them-.
Obviously you want to lead it, but you can only lead it if you have the right tools at your
disposal, and you may have more flexibility of timing of how you go about it. A healthy
regard to those things and a constantly learning by iteration-. I mean, some people I find
that you have a conversation with, and then the next time it's as though it never happened.
There's no behavioral change. I like to think that as each day goes by, I have a degree of
behavioral change because something new has occurred.
JM: Let me see if I can pursue this through a little bit further. What do you read?
What is your social circle like? What are the sorts of things that impinge on your
attention outside of this office?
DG: Well, I suppose one thing is that when you're bora in one country and live in
another and routinely travel around the world, you do get a perspective that would be
very hard to get if you stayed in one place. That is definitely the case. Just by comparing
31 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
DENNIS GILLINGS
JUNE 10, 1999 the British health system and the United States' health system you can by personal
experience-. You don't have to be an academic. You don't have to read the New
England Journal of Medicine. You can glean an awful lot. I do think worldliness has
played a large role. I think that lots of colleagues would come from different places and
friends. I would probably rate that as the highest individual thing in my own case.
JM: I want to look at the clock here. We probably have just a few minutes here
before we should comfortably end. I'm wondering if in fact this might not be a bad spot
to stop, if we could maybe look some point further down the road about all of the
expansion of the business and so forth.
DG: Perfect.
JM: The IPO.
DG: That would, because the part that you have ahead is a fairly long part and
probably would be a nice one to one and a half hours continuously.
JM: Good. Thank you so much.
DG: Perfect.
END OF INTERVIEW
32 Interview number I-0072 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.
Top Related