Latham & Watkins and Davis Polk & Wardwell are advising on the tie-up of transatlantic intellectual property management companies CPA Global and Clarivate in a deal worth $6.8 billion.

Latham is advising CPA Global, a portfolio company of U.S. private equity heavyweight Leonard Green & Partners, on the deal, which is expected to close in the final quarter of 2020.

In a statement Clarivate said that the merger would strengthen the combined business in key geographies given "the strength of CPA Global in Europe and Clarivate in North America and Asia".

The cross-border Latham deal team is being led by London corporate partners David Walker and Linzi Thomas, with New York partners Howard Sobel, John Giouroukakis, and Eyal Orgad.

The deal is a repeat mandate for Latham in advising Leonard Green, with Linzi Thomas having advised the private equity firm on its acquisition of CPA Global in summer 2017 from Cinven, and the 2019 merger between CPA Global and the ipan/Delegate group.

Thomas commented in a statement: "This combination between CPA Global and Clarivate shows significant global deals can still happen, notwithstanding the limitations of COVID-19 to in person meetings and travel. We are seeing M&A activity returning, with a number of substantial deals in the pipeline."

Davis Polk, meanwhile, is acting as legal adviser to Clarivate, which is headquartered between Philadelphia and London. New York corporate partners Joseph Hall and Daniel Brass are leading the firm's team, which is made up of four more partners across the New York and Washington D.C. offices.

Skadden also took a role on the transaction to advise one of the minority shareholders in CPA, Castik Capital, with a team led from the firm's London, Brussels and New York offices by corporate partner Richard Youle and counsel Steven Hannah.

Earlier in July, Latham & Watkins topped the global M&A value tables in new data from Mergermarket that showed the extent to which the coronavirus pandemic has impacted the M&A markets.

The U.S. firm has also recently bolstered its London corporate offering by bringing in a new partner, John Guccione, from OMERS Infrastructure, where he was managing director of legal.

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