Consultancy acquisitions the latest trend–who’s next? Dublin’s UDG Healthcare acquired Philadelphia-based healthcare consultancy Vynamic last week, then topped it on Monday with marketing/communications company Cambridge BioMarketing. Cambridge has an unusual specialty–campaigns for orphan and specialty drugs and treatments with clients from small to large pharma and biotech. Vynamic, an industry management consultancy, provides services from strategic planning to process design and systems implementation.

This follows on the reveal earlier this month in Bloomberg of the potential sale of The Advisory Board’s healthcare practice to UnitedHealthcare. Last week, this Editor mentioned Evolent Health in Rock Health’s record-breaking review of first half 2017 funding. It turns out that publicly traded Evolent is partly owned by The Advisory Board, with a share valued at $170 million, and reportedly had been seeking funding to itself purchase The Advisory Board, now considered unlikely (BizJournals). What will happen to this share isn’t known.

The Vynamic acquisition is structured as an initial purchase price of $22 million with an additional consideration of up to $10 million payable over the next three years, based on the usual achievement of agreed profit targets, for a total of $32 million (€27.8 million). Irish Times Vynamic will join UDG’s Ashfield Division. Release For Cambridge, it’s a similar arrangement of $30 million (€26m) paid up front, with the potential for an additional $5 million (€4.3m) paid over the next 12 months, again dependent on achieving financial targets. RTE.ie, Release