Kirkland & Ellis and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer are among a number of firms to have landed roles on the $8.8bn (£6.6bn) purchase of Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE) software business, by UK technology company Micro Focus.

Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, Ashurst and Travers Smith are also advising on the sale, which includes the assets of Autonomy, the UK software group that Hewlett Packard (HP) bought in 2011.

HPE was formed in November 2015 by the split of HP into two companies – Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company and HP Inc.

Freshfields is acting for HPE on the deal with a team led by London corporate partners Ben Spiers and Stephen Hewes. It is understood that Wachtell is also advising HPE.

Kirkland is representing Micro Focus with a team led out of New York, comprising corporate partners William Sorabella, David Feirstein, John Kupiec and David Fox; and tax partners Dean Shulman, Mike Carew and Vincent Thorn. The team is supported by a Chicago team including finance partners Christopher Butler and Maureen Dixon and IP partners Gregg Kirchhoefer and Aaron Lorber.

Travers is also advising Micro Focus, led by corporate head Spencer Summerfield and supported by corporate partner Jon Reddington, competition partners Nigel Seay and Stephen Whitfield, intellectual property head Dan Reavill, and tax partner Simon Yates.

Ashurst, meanwhile, is advising JP Morgan Cazenove, the lead financial adviser and sole sponsor to Micro Focus, with a team led by City corporate partner Dominic Ross.

Micro Focus joined the FTSE 100 last week, replacing ARM after it was bought by Japan's Softbank.

Other firms to have advised HP in recent years include Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, Freshfields and Drinker Biddle, all of which took roles on the 2011 acquisition of Autonomy, with HP's board of directors taking advice from a London-based team at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom. Slaughter and May took the lead role for Autonomy.

The following year, Clifford Chance represented Autonomy founder Mike Lynch against allegations of financial impropriety and misrepresentation made by HP, after the company announced an $8.8bn write-down related to Autonomy in the fourth quarter of the 2012 financial year.

HP attributed more than $5bn of the write-down to "accounting improprieties, misrepresentation and disclosure failures discovered by an internal investigation by HP and forensic review into Autonomy's accounting practices prior to its acquisition".