Milbank LLP advised Sartorius AG on the acquisition of a majority stake of 62.5% in ALS Automated Lab Solutions GmbH.
The life science group Sartorius is a leading international partner to the biopharmaceutical research industry. In their 2020 fiscal year, the company generated sales of approximately €2.34 billion with around 10,600 employees at approximately 60 production and sales sites worldwide.
ALS Automated Lab Solutions GmbH is a laboratory technology company based in Jena, Germany, and develops, manufactures and markets solutions for the automated analysis, selection and isolation of cells. With these solutions, ALS Automated Lab Solutions GmbH enables life science customers to significantly reduce time to result and cost in cell line development and antibody discovery. Other application areas are the development of cell and gene therapeutics as well as rare single cell molecular diagnostics in cancer and prenatal research.
By acquiring the majority stake in ALS Automated Lab Solutions GmbH, Sartorius is expanding its bioanalytics portfolio. Sartorius is initially purchasing 62.5% of the shares in ALS Automated Lab Solutions GmbH as of January 3, 2022. The remaining 37.5% will be acquired in 2026.
The Milbank team that advised the buyer comprehensively on the corporate, tax and antitrust aspects of the transaction, was led by partner Michael Bernhardt and included partners Matthias Schell (Tax, Munich), and Alexander Rinne (Antitrust, Munich) as well as associates Leopold Riedl (who has been promoted to partnership as per 1 January 2022), Sarah-Maria Resch and Steffen Post (all Corporate, Frankfurt).
