Cleary Gottlieb actively represents many of the biggest pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in the world in important corporate transactional matters as well as on precedent-setting antitrust, regulatory, arbitration and litigation issues. We also provide counsel to the financial institutions that advise and assist these companies in their capital markets financings. With 12 integrated global offices, our lawyers work assiduously on behalf of our clients to bridge borders and navigate multi-jurisdictional regulatory requirements to enable the mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and other corporate transactions that meet their business goals.
Practice highlights include:
- Regular EC law counsel to Merck & Co. on a cutting-edge issues, including in precedent-setting European Court of Justice win regarding the interpretation of the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and in antitrust challenges by generic companies.
- Antitrust counsel to GlaxoSmithKline in connection with numerous transactions, including its recent $15 billion bid to acquire Pfizer’s consumer health care business.
- Counsel to Boehringer Ingelheim in precedent-setting European Court of Justice win regarding the scope of trademark owners’ rights in relation to parallel importers that repackage pharmaceutical products.
- Regular counsel to Medtronic on a range of matters, including in its $3.9 billion Kyphon acquisition.
- Counsel to TPG, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs and KKR in $10.9 billion Biomet acquisition—one of the largest LBOs of all time.
- Antitrust counsel to Merck & Co. in its collaboration with GTx to advance research and development of selective androgen receptor modulators (SARM).
- Regular global counsel to 3M, including in the sale of its global pharmaceuticals business to three buyers.
- Counsel to GlaxoSmithKline in many litigation matters, including a class action litigation in U.S. federal court relating to allegations of patent misuse in connection with Augmentin, GSK’s drugs for treating HIV/AIDS; a U.S. class action challenging GSK’s efforts to restrict illegal export and price-fixing of its products; the simultaneous resolution of a number of pending actions related to Wellbutrin XL; as well as on antitrust issues arising from the settlement of a patent litigation involving Paxil.
- Counsel to GlaxoSmithKline and its U.S. subsidiary SmithKline Beecham in the $1.65 billion acquisition of Reliant Pharmaceuticals, as well as to GSK in its acquisitions of Domantis Limited, Praecis Pharmaceuticals, CNS, ID Biomedical Corporation and Corixa.
- Counsel to Lundbeck in connection with the distribution of pharmaceutical products in Europe.