Skadden is advising Japan’s Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co on its agreement to buy U.S. biotechnology company Astex Pharmaceuticals Inc for about $886 million.
The move comes as Otsuka seeks to increase revenue streams as patents for its mainstay Abilify schizophrenia treatment will begin to expire.
Large pharmaceutical companies facing such patent losses have increasingly been looking to acquire smaller biotech firms to gain access to new drugs that could bolster income, with cancer therapy an especially hot area for deal making.
Amgen Inc last month struck the fifth-largest biotechnology deal in history by agreeing to buy Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc for $10.4 billion.
In the first half of 2013, the overall volume of healthcare mergers and acquisitions jumped more than 30 percent compared with the same period last year, Reuters reported.
The Skadden team was led by corporate partners Kenton King in Palo Alto and Mitsuhiro Kamiya in Tokyo, and executive compensation and benefits partner Joseph Yaffe in Palo Alto.
The deal is expected to close early in the fourth quarter of 2013.
Astex said Otsuka would have to pay a $31 million termination fee if it did not go through with the planned acquisition.
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