It was an active and successful year for our transactional lawyers, who served as issuers’ counsel or underwriters’ counsel in more than 30 public offerings and Rule 144A placements raising approximately $10 billion in 2012; advised on more than 100 M&A transactions in the United States, Asia and Europe with an aggregate value of approximately $15 billion; completed more than 200 venture capital financings with an aggregate value of approximately $1.5 billion; and negotiated more than 100 significant technology transactions and licensing deals in the life sciences and high-tech industries. Among many other matters, we closed numerous funds for fund sponsors and investors; represented an array of leading financial institutions in precedent-setting, multi-billion-dollar bankruptcy litigation; and handled major real estate transactions. Below is a selection of our 2012 highlights:

• Our national Emerging Company Practice—recognized by the Financial Times in its third annual “US Innovative Lawyers” special report for its pioneering QuickStart program, which gives startups access to specialized legal advice under deferred, fixed, reduced and no-fee arrangements—added more than 250 new clients in the United States across a variety of industries, including connected TV content distribution and ad platform leader adRise; “big data” management company Cloudant; social networking startup Cloze; social media data analytics company GraphDive; mobile app and social platform Lightt; fintech innovator MineralTree; digital media content distribution and monetization platform OnCircle; and educational technology company ThinkCERCA.
• We represented Thermo Fisher Scientific in its acquisition of One Lambda for $925 million, and SS&C Technologies in its acquisition of GlobeOp Financial Services for $900 million.
• We represented Kiva Systems in its acquisition by Amazon.com for $775 million and ISTA Pharmaceuticals in its acquisition by Bausch + Lomb for $500 million.
• We represented Dean Foods in the $391 million initial public offering and proposed spin-off of the businesses comprising the WhiteWave Alpro segment; Merrimack Pharmaceuticals in its $105 million initial public offering; and Demandware in its $101 million initial public offering.
• We represented Genpact in a $170 million secondary public offering of common stock; Infinity Pharmaceuticals in a $150 million follow-on public offering of common stock; The Medicines Company in a $275 million Rule 144A offering of convertible senior notes; and State Street Bank and Trust Company in a $1 billion public offering of extendible notes.
• We represented our client Yandex, the largest Internet company in Russia, in its joint venture with Sberbank, the largest savings bank in Russia, to develop innovative electronic retail payment solutions on the Yandex.Money platform.
• We advised Alnylam Pharmaceuticals in the negotiation of its alliance with Genzyme, a Sanofi company, for the development and commercialization, in Japan and other Asia-Pacific countries, of Alnylam’s clinical stage RNAi therapeutic targeting transthyretin for the treatment of transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis, a rare, debilitating, hereditary disease that damages the nervous system and heart; we negotiated all aspects of a deal between Constellation Pharmaceuticals and Genentech in which (a) the two companies agreed to collaborate on the research and development of compounds directed to cancer targets, and (b) Genentech obtained an option to buy Constellation if certain triggers are achieved; and we advised TriZetto, the nation’s leading healthcare IT company, in connection with an outsourcing agreement with EPAM that involved the outsourcing of certain application development–related functions to EPAM’s operations in Eastern Europe.
• Our Bankruptcy and Financial Restructuring Group achieved substantial success in complex financial restructurings, both in and out of court. We represented the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors in Getty Petroleum Marketing’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York. With our guidance, the committee—the group of Chapter 11 debtors who operate the company’s 800-plus gas dealerships along the northeast corridor of the United States—took control of the case by proposing and obtaining confirmation of its Chapter 11 plan of reorganization. Members of our group also led efforts in obtaining a consensual restructuring of Bicent Power on behalf of the agent for the second-lien lenders, through a pre-arranged Chapter 11 plan confirmed by the bankruptcy court in Delaware.
• We were at the forefront of major bankruptcy litigation matters, including a number of multibillion-dollar actions resulting from spinoffs and leveraged buyouts that were followed by later bankruptcy filings. In one such case in US district court, a WilmerHale team defended a Fortune 20 company against a suit brought by a litigation trust on behalf of creditors of a former subsidiary, related to the spinoff of the former subsidiary prior to its bankruptcy. We successfully moved to strike the creditor trust’s jury demand, obtained the dismissal of a substantial portion of the claims, and proceeded to a two-week bench trial on the remainder of the claims. The district court recently issued a lengthy opinion based on the evidence presented at trial, ruling for our client.
• Our Labor and Employment Group won a defense verdict on behalf of Teradyne after a three-week jury trial in Suffolk Superior Court on a gender discrimination claim. Our team then won a significant post-trial motion overturning a damage award on the retaliation claim, resulting in $0 in post-trial damages for our client.
• Our Real Estate Group continues to be a leader in high-profile sectors such as senior living and life sciences. In the senior living arena, we handled acquisitions, development, financing and joint ventures for operators and investors, including public REITs and private equity funds, throughout the United States. Our life sciences work included the land assembly, zoning and entitlement process that resulted in a proposed 1,500,000-square-foot lab development in East Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a public lab REIT, as well as ground lease and construction work for a major pharmaceutical company’s two-building $600 million lab facility, also in Cambridge.
• We represented one of the world’s largest retailers in dozens of complicated development transactions throughout New England and handled acquisitions, dispositions, financings and joint venture investments throughout the United States for some of the real estate industry’s most influential private equity funds and public REITs.
• Each year, our Real Estate Group handles significant and high-profile company-side headquarters transactions, and 2012 was no different, with representative examples including a financial services company’s 400,000-square-foot headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts (the complete renovation of an iconic building); a 230,000-square-foot build-to-suit headquarters in Needham, Massachusetts, for an Internet services company; a 250,000-square-foot headquarters lease in Waltham, Massachusetts, for another internet services company; and a 400,000-square-foot build-to-suit office building in San Diego, California, for a financial services company.
• Our Tax Group provided tax advice for all significant transactions for our Corporate, Fund Formation, Real Estate and Bankruptcy Groups, including those described above. In addition, with the year-end concerns about higher tax rates for 2013 and the impending fiscal cliff, we advised both corporations and individuals on strategies to accelerate income to 2012 for themselves and their stockholders or otherwise plan to mitigate the effects of higher tax rates.