Tom Pike, the CEO of Quintiles (NYSE: Q), must like to build with Legos or play with puzzles because he certainly is disclosing details about the giant’s forthcoming joint venture with Quest Diagnostics to take on LabCorp/Covance in the global testing market one piece at a time. Here are a couple of recent samples for our Insiders:

  • “[I]t is one of the most exciting things happening in the industry,” Pike told Wall Street last week.
  • There also will there be synergies (read: cost-savings), added Quintiles’ top financial executive.
  • The latest disclosure came Monday wht the announcement that Quintiles will open a bioanalytical lab in Europe.

“Adding this capability in Europe is a key step for our bioanalytical business and supports the strategy to increase our participation in the substantial European bioanalytical market,” said Costa Panagos, senior vice president and global head of Global Central Laboratories at Quintiles, in the announcement. “This is an exciting milestone for Quintiles and specifically our laboratory business as we expand our capabilities while continuing to provide the value and high-quality service our customers require.”

So how important is the lab? Panagos will serve as CEO of the joint venture once it launches, and the lab is the first big piece Quintiles has discussed as the negotiations to finalize the joint venture continue.

Last week, Pike also offered some details in a conference call with Wall Street analysts as he discussed the latest quarterly earnings.

“Our globality …”

“We’ve been really pleased with the feedback from the customers so far, and interestingly, they just find the logic very clear,” Pike said in response to a question about the JV.

“We’re the best clinical player with the deep medical and scientific expertise and they are the largest laboratory with the deepest operations expertise.

“Our globality, their focus in the U.S., their understanding of the diagnostic technologies, our understanding of getting them clinically validated, it just makes such sense to people that we do this and it’s powerful. And the other thing that I’ll say that I think our colleagues at Quest have emphasized, we just think this is a really efficient way to do this in terms of use of cash and use of our resources.

“So more to come on this, I will tell you, it is one of the most exciting things happening in the industry and as we’ve spoken about, we’ve even had some interest from other CROs and potentially leveraging those capabilities over time.”

Quintiles will own 60 percent of the joint venture, added Quintiles Chief Financial Officer Kevin Gordon.

“Synergies” to come

Gordon also said the two companies expected “synergies,” but specifics have to wait until closing.

“[C]learly we see the benefits of the consolidation that we should see come through into our financial results,” Gordon explained. “So we are expecting synergies associated with the combination of the two entities into the JV, but we’ll give you a clear guidance on that once we know the timing of the closing and the impact for the year or so.”

And so the building of the JV puzzle continues.