Allen McClay

Allen McClay was born on March 21, 1932, in Cookstown, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, and attended the local high school.⁠[1][2]

After completing a pharmacy apprenticeship, McClay qualified as a pharmacist and initially worked in pharmacy.⁠[2]

McClay joined the pharmaceutical company Glaxo, where he moved into a sales role and gradually built up experience in the pharmaceutical industry.⁠[2]

McClay founded Galen, his first company, in Craigavon, Northern Ireland, and gradually built it into a pharmaceutical company.⁠[2][1]

Galen was listed on the stock market and went on to become Northern Ireland’s first company with a market value of £1 billion.⁠[3][2]

McClay established the McClay Trust by a Declaration of Trust to make charitable donations. The trust was the forerunner of the McClay Foundation.⁠[4]

McClay retired from Galen Holdings. After Galen’s direction changed, he sold his shareholding and invested his personal fortune in another business.⁠[3][1]

McClay founded Almac Group, which acquired Galen’s services businesses, including API manufacturing, chemical development, clinical trial supply, and clinical technologies. The group then opened its global headquarters in Craigavon in 2003 and continued to expand with biomarker and pharmaceutical manufacturing businesses.⁠[3]

The New Year Honours list published in The London Gazette named Allen James McClay a Knight Bachelor for services to business and to charity in Northern Ireland, describing him as Chair of Almac and Chair of the Queen’s University of Belfast Foundation. Almac confirmed the honour in an announcement in January 2006, and Prince Charles knighted him at Buckingham Palace in 2006.⁠[5][6][3]

McClay had donated almost £20 million through the McClay Trust to research at Queen’s University Belfast, including £3.5 million for the McClay Research Centre and £6 million for pharmacy and chemistry research, with the remainder committed to a new library.⁠[6]

McClay and Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell broke ground on Almac’s North American headquarters project. The project represented an investment of about $100 million, and the building was then expected to employ more than 750 people once completed.⁠[7]

McClay established The McClay Foundation, a company limited by guarantee with charitable status that supports drug research and development, oncology research, and health-related charitable projects.⁠[4]

The assets of the McClay Trust were transferred to the McClay Foundation, a step separate from the trust’s establishment in 1997 and the foundation’s establishment in 2008.⁠[4]

Queen’s University Belfast’s new library opened and was named after McClay in honour of his donations to the university and the library. The McClay Trust donated £10 million to the new library, which was a £50 million project in total.⁠[8][9]

McClay publicly announced the establishment of the foundation and the direction of its research collaboration. The foundation and McClay himself were to become the sole shareholders of Almac Group, with the group’s board and the foundation’s trustees operating independently of each other. The foundation, Queen’s University, and Invest NIInvest Northern IrelandInvest Northern Ireland (Invest NI) is Northern Ireland’s regional economic development agency, a non-departmental public body and arm’s-length body of the Department for the Economy. It was established on April 1, 2002, under the Industrial Development Act (Northern Ireland) 2002 and is headquartered in Belfast.Open the full entry were finalising a five-year research plan to advance personalised medication in oncology.⁠[9]

McClay died at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry, at the age of 77. He had been receiving treatment in the United States since November 2009.⁠[10][1]

Almac Group: Official website: https://www.almacgroup.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[3]

The McClay Foundation: Official website: https://mcclayfoundation.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[11]