Big Deals: Dade Behring

For Siemens AG it's one piece of equipment or another. The German conglomerate announced that it had agreed to acquire Dade Behring Holdings, Inc., the medial diagnostics company, for $7 billion on July 25, the same day it signed a deal to sell its automotive electronics unit for $15.6 billion to Continental AG.

Siemens agreed to pay $77 per share for Dade Behring, a 37 percent premium to the target's July 24 closing price. Dade makes clinical testing equipment and would join two recent acquisitions in the same sector by Siemens, which last year acquired Los Angeles-based Diagnostics Products Corporation for $1.86 billion and the diagnostics unit of Bayer AG for $5.3 billion.

Siemens expects to close its acquisition of Dade Behring in the fourth quarter pending European antitrust approval. Advisers on the Dade Behring deal follow.

FOR ACQUIROR SIEMENS AG (MUNICH)

In-House: Vice president - mergers and acquisitions Kenneth Meyers, associate general counsel Kevin Royer and Anton Steiger, senior intellectual property counsel Frank Montgomery, and vice president - patents and licensing Andrew Klawitter. (Meyers and Royer are in New York; Steiger is in Germany; Montgomery is in Iselin, New Jersey; and Klawitter is in Tarrytown, New York.)

Clifford Chance: M&A: John Healey and associates Benjamin Sibbett and Pia Thadhani. (All are in New York.) Healy has worked for Siemens on major deals for about a decade. Among others, he helped the company buy Westinghouse Electric Corporation's global nonnuclear power generation business in 1998.

Heller Ehrman: Intellectual Property: Paul Davis, Ginger Dreger, Harold "Hal" Milstein, special counsel Leslie Mooi, and associates Jeffrey Bernhardt, James Fox, Pamela Gao, and Sam Nguyen. (All are in the Menlo Park, California.) Heller has advised Siemens on diagnostics-related intellectual property issues for several years.

FOR TARGET DADE BEHRING HOLDINGS, INC. (DEERFIELD, ILLINOIS)

In-House: General counsel Lance Balk and deputy general counsel Louise Pearson.

Kirkland & Ellis: Corporate: Thomas Christopher, Andrew Nagel, William Sorabella, and associate Christine Pope. Tax: Steven Clemens. Intellectual property: Edward Sadtler and Lisa Samenfeld. Real estate: Jennifer Morgan. Antitrust: Mark Kovner and Marimichael Skubel. Environmental transactional: Walter Lohmann, Jr. Labor and employment: of counsel John Irving and associate Nicole Brightbill. Employee benefits: Matthew Antinossi and Robert Zitko. (All are in New York except Kovner, Skubel, Lohmann, Irving, and Brightbill, who are in Washington D.C., and Antinoosi and Zitko, who are in Chicago.) Balk was a partner at Kirkland before he joined Dade Behring last year. He started representing Dade Behring when Boston private equity firm Bain Capital, LLC, a Kirkland client, acquired the diagnostics business of Baxter International Inc. in 1994.

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom: Antitrust: Alec Chang, Henry Huser, counsel Horst Henschen, and associates Rita Sinkfield Belin, C. Scott Lent, and Christian Peeters. (Chang is in Palo Alto; Huser and Peeters are in Brussels; Henschen is in Frankfurt; and Belin and Lent are in New York.) Skadden has been antitrust counsel to the company since its creation via the 1997 merger of Dade and the Behring Diagnostics unit of Hoechst AG, which is now a part of Sanofi-Aventis.

Perkins Coie: M&A: Phillip Gordon. Executive compensation and employee benefits: Susan Daley and of counsel Danielle Benderly. (Gordon and Daley are in Chicago; Benderly is in Portland, Oregon.)

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