Wake Up Call: Five Firms Lead Amgen’s $27.8 Billion Horizon Deal

Welcome to Bloomberg Law’s Wake Up Call, a daily rundown of the top news for lawyers, law firms, and in-house counsel.

• Sullivan & Cromwell and Irish law firm William Fry LLP are advising biotech giant Amgen Inc. on its agreement to buy Dublin-based Horizon Therapeutics Plc for about $27.8 billion. Cooley LLP and Irish firm Matheson LLP are counseling Horizon on the deal, which is expected to close in 2023’s first half. Willkie Farr & Gallagher is advising Morgan Stanley, which is financial adviser to Horizon, the law firm said. (PR Newswire)
• Lateral hires of lawyers shrank by double digits in the last two months this year after they soared during 2021’s deal-making bonanza. But firms are still hiring talent roughly at a pre-pandemic clip, although they’ve cooled on transactional lawyers and are now focused on litigation, restructuring, and regulatory talent, this report says. (American Lawyer)
• Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase said the number of information requests it gets from law enforcement have spiked by about 66% in the last year, with the lion’s share stemming from US criminal investigations. (CoinTelegraph)
• Linklaters is the latest UK elite firm to match the Baker McKenzie/Cravath scale for year-end associate bonuses for its US associates. Political law boutique Elias Law Group also matched for attorneys meeting their performance goals, while attorneys beating their targets can get extra money. (Above The Law)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• A Skadden legal team for travel booking software provider Sabre Corp., which lost a $1 verdict to American Airlines Group Inc. in an antitrust trial earlier this year, told a judge the airline shouldn’t be able to get legal fees for the case. (Reuters)
• A New Jersey personal injury law firm said it plans to provide its staff nonfungible tokens that they can use to access mental health services. (ABA Journal)
• A former Maine prosecutor convicted of destroying evidence during an FBI investigation was suspended from practicing law for nine months. (Law.com)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• Patent litigator Jeff Danley joined Bracewell LLP’s intellectual property team in Seattle. He arrives from Seed Intellectual Property and was at Simpson Thacher earlier in his career. (Bracewell.com)
• Foley & Lardner grabbed DLA Piper transactional tax attorney Rishi Sodhi as a partner in Los Angeles. (Foley.com)
• Katten Muchin Rosenman picked up corporate attorney Emily K. Watson as a partner in Chicago in its M&A and private equity practice. She was recently a partner at Levenfeld Pearlstein and earlier spent a decade at McDermott Will & Emery. (Katten.com)
• Brown Rudnick hired Dentons private equity and M&A lawyer Paul Doris as a partner in London. He’s focused on energy transition and infrastructure transactions. (BrownRudnick.com)
• Organon & Co, a Jersey City-based women’s health care company that spun off from pharmaceutical giant Merck last year, named its interim legal chief Kirke Weaver to permanent general counsel and corporate secretary, effective Jan. 1, 2023. Weaver, also on the company’s executive leadership team, is a former vice president in Merck’s general counsel office and was a Drinker Biddle associate. (NJBiz)
• Enhabit, Inc., a home health and hospice provider, hired civil litigator Dylan Black, a Bradley Arant Boult Cummings partner, as general counsel, effective January 2023. (Businesswire)
• Southwest Airlines promoted associate general counsel Kevin Minchey to vice president for legal, labor & litigation. (SWAMedia.com)
• Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. said vice president, corporate counsel Ryan Heinemann will take over from retiring GC Chris Gawart as general counsel effective March 1, 2023. (Northwestern Mutual)

Promotions

• Effective Jan. 1, 2023: Haynes and Boone promoted 16 lawyers to partner. (HaynesBoone) Glenn Agre Bergman & Fuentes promoted trial lawyer Skye Tian Gao to partner; Davis & Gilbert promoted four to partner; and Munger Tolles & Olson elevated three lawyers to partner. (MTO.com)