Durham, North Carolina: Clinical testing company Quintiles Transnational wants to become a public company again after nearly a decade in private hands.

The Durham, NC-based company said on Friday it filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of stock worth up to $600 million (Dh2.2 billion).

Quintiles calls itself the world’s largest contract research company helping large pharmaceutical companies test and sell drugs.

The company founded in 1982 by biostatistics professor Dennis Gillings became a public company in 1994. Gillings and others bought out stockholders to take Quintiles private again in 2003. It’s now owned by Gillings “hedge funds Bain Capital Partners and TPG Global” and Singapore state investment company Temasek Holdings.

Quintiles said its revenues last year were $3.7 billion.