Bio

Nicola Maguire is a partner in Cooley's life sciences practice and is resident in the London office. She has developed a practice specialising in advising life sciences companies and other clients whose businesses have a significant reliance on intellectual property. Many of the transactions on which Nicola works have a significant international element, with parties in the US or Europe. Nicola's experience includes advising on the acquisition for Swedish listed company Meda AB of an Italian specialty pharma company, Rottapharm, for the Danish, listed company Ambu A/S on its acquisition of King Systems, a US subsidiary of UK listed company, Consort Medical, on the creation of an Indian joint venture between the Wellcome Trust and Merck and on the creation of a joint venture between Swedish company, Karolinska Development and UK based Rosetta Capital. Transactions such as this illustrate the cross-border nature of Nicola's practice. She has particular expertise advising clients at all stages of development, from early stage startups to listed companies, and on mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and equity fundings. Nicola's practice also includes advising on general commercial matters such as materials transfer agreements, intellectual property licences, research and collaboration agreements and distribution and manufacturing agreements. Recent transactions include acting for the Wellcome Trust on its collaboration relating to dengue fever with the University of Leuven and Janssen and for King's College London on a licence and development agreement with UCB. Nicola is recommended for corporate advice in the Global Counsel Life Sciences Industry Report, Chambers, IAM and in the Legal 500. In 2016, she was included in The Lawyer's Elite Hot 100 list. She writes extensively in various journals on matters concerning Life Sciences companies and speaks at conferences on matters of interest to the Life Sciences sector. Nicola is recognised by Who's Who Legal for Life Sciences in which she is noted as being "very visible in the market" on a range of licensing, collaboration, distribution and clinical trial agreements also then states that "her presence on complex transactions is a blessing." Nicola has also been included in the latest edition of Euromoney's Women in Business Law Expert Guides. Nicola speaks fluent French having spent three years working in Paris on commercial and corporate matters whilst at Freshfields. Nicola was previously a partner at Reed Smith from 2005 - 2015 and Bird & Bird from 2001 to 2005. Previously, she worked in the in-house legal departments at GE Lighting and Cable & Wireless Communications.