Cleary, Cooley, White & Case Grab Roles in Big Week for Pharma, Health Care Deals

Several Am Law 100 and international firms shook off a first quarter M&A malaise by working on pharmaceutical and health care sector deals worth more than $25.6 billion all told.

The Am Law Daily reported earlier this week on the lawyers advising Pfizer on the $11.9 billion sale of the company’s infant formula business to Nestle, Watson Pharmaceuticals on its $5.6 billion acquisition of Swiss drugmaker Actavis Group, AstraZeneca on its $1.26 billion acquisition of Ardea Biosciences, and Thomson Reuters on the $1.25 billion sale of its health care unit to an affiliate of private equity firm Veritas Capital.

The end of the week brought another rash of transactions and potential transactions involving the same industries—meaning a fresh round of deal work to keep corporate lawyers busy.

San Diego–based Amylin Pharmaceuticals, for instance, is officially back on the auction block, according to various news reports, after making peace with activist investor Carl Icahn and spurning a $3.5 billion takeover offer from Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom—which helped Amylin extricate itself from a drug development deal with Eli Lilly late last year—is advising the company on its strategic options, including a possible sale. Marcea Lloyd serves as general counsel for Amylin, Harry Leonhardt its deputy general counsel and corporate secretary, and Lloyd Rowland the company’s chief compliance officer.

Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton M&A partner Michael McDonald and tax partner Richard Sultman in London, meanwhile, are leading a team from the firm advising Thousand Oaks, California–based Amgen, the world’s largest biotech company, on its $700 million acquisition of Turkish drugmaker Mustafa Nevzat Pharmaceuticals.

Bloomberg reports that economic growth in Turkey is increasing demand for medicines in the country. Istanbul’s Paksoy Law Firm is serving as local counsel to Amgen through partner Elvan Aziz. Outside legal advisers for Mustafa Nevzat were not immediately available.

Amgen’s general counsel is David Scott, Anna Richo serves as the company’s chief compliance officer, and former Hogan & Hartson partner David Beier is senior vice president for global government affairs. Amgen tapped Sullivan & Cromwell earlier this month for counsel on its $315 million acquisition of KAI Pharmaceuticals.

Announcing a $700 million deal of its own this week was Dublin-based Jazz Pharmaceuticals, which turned to lawyers from Irish firm A&L Goodbody, Baker & McKenzie, and Cooley for counsel on the company’s proposed acquisition of Oxford, England–based EUSA Pharma.

Cooley M&A partner Jennifer Fonner DiNucci in Palo Alto and finance partner Gian-Michele a Marca in San Francisco are leading a team from the firm advising Jazz on the deal. Former Cooley partner Suzanne Hooper serves as Jazz’s general counsel.

K&L Gates is advising EUSA on its sale to Jazz, which includes $650 million in cash plus a potential $50 million milestone cash payment based upon EUSA’s top cancer drug Erwinaze. EUSA’s general counsel is Zoe Evans.

On Thursday, German medical equipment company the Fresenius Group announced a $4.1 billion bid to acquire hospital operator Rhön-Klinikum in a deal that would make the acquiring conglomerate an imposing presence in the German health care market.

Magic Circle shop Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and German firms Hengeler Mueller and Noerr are advising Bad Homburg–based Fresenius on the matter, according to German legal publication Juve. Noerr partner Dieter Schenk serves as vice-chairman of the Fresenius board, which fellow Noerr partner Bernd Fahrholz is a member of the company’s supervisory board, respectively. Fresenius’s general counsel is Rainer Runte.

Fresenius’s bid for Rhön-Klinikum, based in the northern Bavarian town of Bad Neustadt and advised by Taylor Wessing M&A partner Christoph Vaupel in Frankfurt, reportedly has the support of company founder and chairman Eugen Muench. Detlef Klimpe, a partner at German firm Leinen & Derichs, is a member of Rhon-Klinikum’s supervisory board.

White & Case banking and finance partners R. Jake Mincemoyer in London and Leila Roeder in Munich are leading a team from the firm representing Deutsche Bank in connection with the financing for the deal.

A second Magic Circle firm, Clifford Chance, took the lead this week for German pharmaceutical giant Bayer on the sale of the company’s molecular imaging research and development portfolio to India’s Piramal Healthcare, according to U.K. publication Legal Week. Terms of the deal were undisclosed.

British firm Stephenson Harwood is representing Piramal on the purchase, along with Swiss shop Baer & Karrer and Germany’s Klinkert, Legal Week reports. Piramal, which is reportedly on the hunt for acquisitions these days, is financing the Bayer deal with proceeds from the $3.7 billion sale of its generic drug unit to Abbott Laboratories in 2010. Stepheson Harwood also advised Piramal on that transaction.