FDR - Faber Daeufer & Rosenberg

FDR's lawyers serve as corporate counsel for many private biotechnology companies – ranging from companies like Lux Biosciences, which has filed for approval in the United States and Europe for its first pharmaceutical product, to companies like Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, which has raised its first round of professional financing and is beginning clinical trials for its first product candidate. We advise management and Boards, from a legal perspective, about financing, strategic transactions, governance, equity compensation plans and compliance.

From a transactional perspective, we handle the full range of financing transactions for private companies, including angel investments, early and follow-on rounds of equity financing, venture debt, equipment financing and capital leasing. We have been actively involved in the preparation of model documents published by the National Venture Capital Association, and we have developed strong working relationships with most of the traditional venture capital firms, corporate venture affiliates, banks and angel groups who are active and substantial players in life sciences financing in the United States.

We regularly handle mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, joint ventures and spin-outs, and strategic investment in securities of research and development collaborators. Our experience has included some of the largest M&A transactions in the life sciences industry in the past few years, as well as more modest (but strategically important) acquisitions from distressed sales.

We also advise clients concerning real estate leasing, equity compensation plans, securities law compliance, public disclosure and corporate governance, Board administration and general corporate counsel.

For private equity investors in the life sciences, we apply our industry knowledge and understanding of strategic operational and legal issues of potential portfolio companies to design and carry out thorough, sophisticated and efficient due diligence. FDR assists with the formation, operation and administration of a fund and provides cost-effective assistance to portfolio companies post-investment.

FDR's licensing and collaboration practice in the life sciences is among the deepest and most comprehensive in the country.

In general, FDR's professionals handle:

• technology platform licensing
• drug target and product candidate alliances
• FTO licensing
• disclosure of confidential information and material transfer
• product research, development and commercialization collaborations
• supply chain contracting and licensing
• clinical trial collaborations
• promotion and co-promotion arrangements
• "day-to-day" contracting for evaluations, licenses, sponsored research, clinical trials, manufacturing and consulting
• customized form agreement preparation, staff training and contracts management

For almost any transaction that a client may contemplate, FDR can staff that transaction with senior lawyers and/or contracts specialists who focus their practices on handling exactly that kind of transaction. And, when potential clients ask for “deal sheets,” we can usually provide multiple recent examples not just of the general category of transaction (for example, “a development and license agreement”) but also of the specific transaction the client is contemplating (for example, “a cross-border indication split for a small molecule where worldwide supply will be controlled by the IP holder”). In most cases, we will also have recent experience sitting across the table from the potential counterparty.