DLA Piper advises Calliditas Therapeutics in connection with Asahi Kasei’s US$1.1 billion tender offer

DLA Piper is acting as international counsel to Calliditas Therapeutics AB (Calliditas), a Swedish biopharmaceutical company, in connection with the recently announced tender offer by Asahi Kasei Corporation (Asahi), a Japanese conglomerate, for all of Calliditas’ outstanding shares and American Depositary Shares (ADSs) for an aggregate of US$1.1 billion. Calliditas’ shares are listed on Nasdaq Stockholm and its ADSs are listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.

Calliditas is a commercial-stage specialty biopharmaceutical company with its first product, TARPEYO®, approved in the US to treat patients with the renal disease immunoglobulin A nephropathy (IgAN). The Company has licensed the product to partners in the EU, Japan, China and Singapore, where it is in various stages of development and commercialization. It is also developing setanaxib, a NOX inhibitor, for a variety of diseases, including head and neck cancer, alport syndrome, primary biliary cholangitis and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Asahi expects the business combination to accelerate its transformation into a global specialty pharmaceutical business.

“Companies turn to us for our cross-border capabilities. We are pleased to be advising Calliditas based on our deep biopharmaceutical industry experience, our leading global M&A practice and our ability to seamlessly execute across three continents,” said Josh Kaufman (NY/Miami), Co-Chair of DLA’s Capital Markets and Public Companies Advisory Practice, who is leading the deal team with partners Sanjay Shirodkar (DC) and Jonathan Klein (New York).

The DLA Piper team also includes partners Rita Patel and Keith Ranta (both in Washington, DC), Jamie Knox and Paolo Morante (both in New York), Semin O (Frankfurt) and Ting Xiao (Shanghai), and associates Jenna Fontenot (Miami), Alex Carlson (Los Angeles) and Myriem Bennani (Chicago).