Bird & Bird has scored its first deal for Australian client Allco Equity Partners, advising on the £166m bid for iSOFT.

Corporate partner Simon Allport advised Allco as it backed a bid by Australian healthcare information technology company IBA Health for UK software company iSOFT.

Macfarlanes advised IBA in the UK, fielding a team under head of corporate Simon Martin. Allco and BA were advised in Australia by Johnson Winter & Slattery and Baker & McKenzie respectively.

The takeover of iSOFT has been heavily contested. IBA originally made a recommended all-share offer for iSOFT in May 2007 but was trumped by an all-cash offer by German e-health company CompuGROUP in late July.

Allco subsequently agreed to invest up to $300m (£149m) in IBA, enabling IBA to put in a second, higher all-cash offer. CompuGROUP has since withdrawn its offer (29 August), leaving IBA's offer as the recommended bid.

Bird & Bird won the client through a referral from one of Allport's bankers. The company has previously done little business in the UK.

Allport commented: "We hope Allco will be a good new client for the firm. We were pleased to advise them with two competing public offers on the table."

Linklaters is advising iSOFT under corporate partner Robert Cleaver and associate Caroline van Orden.

ISOFT, one of the main suppliers of the NHS' controversial multibillion-pound modernisation programme, hit the headlines last year after it admitted discovering accounting irregularities, which prompted a regulatory investigation.