Ex-Shearman & Sterling corporate partner Adrian Knight has closed his first major deal since quitting for Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom with a £1.4bn healthcare buy-out for a hotly-tipped new sponsor client.

Knight acted for the recently-formed investment house Three Delta on its acquisition of care-home chain Four Seasons Healthcare from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer client Allianz Capital Partners.

The deal, which was signed and closed last week (31 August), saw Three Delta buy Britain's second-biggest chain of nursing homes through investment vehicle Delta Commercial Property.

Knight is understood to have got involved in the transaction through his work with Three Delta boss Paul Taylor – a high-profile financier and former head of structured finance at NatWest – while at Shearman. He led his first major deal for Skadden with a team including banking partner Clive Wells and Frankfurt corporate partner Walter Henle.

Other Skadden deals Knight has been involved in since resigning from Shearman in December include acting for the Berkeley Group on a property joint venture with Prudential and for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on its acquisition of the Swapstream electronic trading platform.

Freshfields acted for regular client Allianz on the Four Seasons disposal with London corporate partners Julian Long, Farah Ispahani and Karen Fountain acting alongside German corporate partner Hartmut Nitschke and London finance partner Nick Gamble.

Freshfields has advised Allianz on Four Seasons matters since it acquired it in 2004, and this care -home disposal comes only four months after the firm advised on financing issues for the £2.2bn acquisition of General Healthcare by Netcare and Apax. It also follows a bidding war for retirement home developer McCarthy & Stone in which Freshfields acted for Victor Tchenguiz and his Rock Acquisitions bidding vehicle.

Long told Legal Week: "[The activity] is due to a combination of the fact there is a lot of property involved, which can be taken as security, and because looking at the demographics of society it should be a good income stream."

Macfarlanes corporate partner Ian Martin acted for the Four Seasons management with Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft acting for Credit Suisse First Boston and Denton Wilde Sapte acting for Royal Bank of Scotland on financing. In 2004, Macfarlanes advised the then institutional shareholder, Alchemy, and incumbent management on their £775m sale of Four Seasons Health Care to Allianz.