Quintiles, the world’s largest pharmaceutical services company, is reportedly getting serious about an initial public offering of stock.

Bloomberg News, citing three people knowledgeable about the situation, reports that two major investors in the privately held Durham company, Bain Capital and TPG Capital, are interviewing investment banks about handling an IPO.

Quintiles is targeting going public this year, according to one of the people who talked to Bloomberg but asked not to be named.

"Quintiles routinely evaluates its capital strategy, and it is our policy not to comment on these matters," company spokesman Phil Bridges said in an email Monday.

A Quintiles IPO would be a big deal on Wall Street given the company’s size.

Quintiles generated more than $3 billion in revenue in 2011 and has about 27,000 workers worldwide, including more than 2,000 in the Triangle. It helps pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies test experimental drugs and assists them with selling and marketing medicines once they win regulatory approval.

Quintiles was a publicly traded company from 1994 to 2003, when founder Dennis Gillings engineered a leveraged buyout after becoming frustrated with running a publicly traded company.

Buzz about Quintiles going public again has been growing since April, when Gillings stepped aside as CEO and brought in Tom Pike, a 22-year-veteran of Accenture, to run the day-to-day operations. Gillings is now executive chairman.

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