Kirkland & Ellis’s recently hired Boston team has scored a key role advising Avidity Biosciences on its $12bn acquisition by Swiss pharma giant Novartis.
The team, which joined earlier this year from Skadden, is advising San Diego-based RNA therapeutics developerAvidity opposite Covington & Burling for Novartis.
The transaction is due to complete in the first half of 2026, with Novartis taking the group’s Antibody Oligonucleotide Conjugates (AOCs) platform for RNA therapeutics, as well as three late-stage neuroscience programs for neuromuscular diseases.
Meanwhile, as part of the transaction, Avidity will separate its early-stage precision cardiology programmes into a new company, SpinCo.
Covington is advising Novartis, with a team led by corporate practice head and M&A co-chair Catherine Dargan and M&A partner Mike Riella, both in Washington DC, as well as New York-based M&A partner Alicia Zhang.
Meanwhile, the Kirkland team advising Avidity includes Boston corporate partners Graham Robinson, Laura Knoll, Greg Schuster and Merric Kaufman, as well as New York capital markets partners Jennifer Lee and Tamar Donikyan.
Robinson, Knoll, Schuster and Kaufman joined Kirkland in May and June of this year from Skadden, where Robinson headed that firm’s Boston office.
The new team has enjoyed a successful few months since joining Kirkland. In June, Robinson, Knoll and Kaufman advised Sage Therapeutics on its $795m sale to Supernus Pharmaceuticals.
This is not the first time the team has navigated an acquisition by Novartis: while at Skadden, Robinson, Kaufman and Schuster acted for German biotech company MorphoSys AG in its €2.7bn acquisition by Novartis.
The deal is the second biggest pharmaceutical transaction of 2025, following Johnson & Johnson’s acquisition of Intra-Cellular Therapies for $14.6bn, which completed in April of this year.
