RALEIGH — After 111 years operating as a single healthcare business, Merz Pharma Group recently announced that it was reorganizing into three independently operating businesses: medical aesthetics, therapeutics and consumer care.

The uptick: Merz Aesthetics will be headquartered right here in Raleigh.

“This will be the largest dedicated medical aesthetics business globally,” its newly appointed global chief executive officer CEO Bob Rhatigan told WRAL TechWire, shortly after the annoucement. “We know the size of our two largest competitors, Allergan and Galderma. They’re focus is not solely on medical aesthetics.”

Rhatigan added the decision to headquarter the company here was an easy one.

“We have a good presence here already. Importantly, the US is the single biggest market in the world for medical aesthetics. It’s 50 percent of the global market in the US, a very fast growing market so we wanted basically be the center of gravity from a market standpoint,” he said.

Merz Pharma Group is a privately owned health care company based in Frankfurt, Germany, with about 3,000 employees worldwide.

The other two businesses – Merz Therapeutics and Merz Consumer Care – will be based out of Frankfurt, Germany.

Merz’s North America headquarters in North Raleigh employs about 300 people and is located in a 60,000 square-foot facility on Six Forks Road.

Merz will start operating in the new structure January 1, 2020.

Rhatigan said he plans to make new hires shortly.

“It will definitely be a net increase, and particularly at a senior level. “I don’t know what it’s going to be. I can’t give you a back-of-the-envelop number, because we’re right in the midst of doing our implementation planning. But it will definitely be increasing.”

He doesn’t seem too worried about attracting talent, either.

“We’ve had great success hiring people and life sciences arena, all through the Research Triangle Park area. It’s also been very productive for us to bring quality talent from outside the US. We have a number of people that have joined us here in Raleigh from California, the northeast, and Midwest variety of international countries. The quality of life and the overall environmental factors here in Raleigh have been condusive to drawing an international talent base that is skilled and really enjoy living here.”

Raleigh pharma firm Merz reorganizes into 3 separate businesses