Genoptix, Inc. (Nasdaq: GXDX) announced today that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement to be acquired by Novartis. Under the terms of the merger agreement, Novartis will commence an all cash tender offer for all outstanding shares of common stock of Genoptix at USD$25.00 per share. The transaction implies, on a fully-diluted basis, a total equity value of approximately USD$470 million and an enterprise value of USD$330 million.

O’Melveny & Myers LLP represented Nektar Therapeutics (Nektar) in its underwritten public offering of 19 million shares of its common stock, raising approximately US$220.4 million.  The public offering closed on January 24, 2011.

After a year-long litigation culminating in a three-day evidentiary hearing, Morrison & Foerster LLP, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, and the Public Counsel Law Center, today obtained the entry of an important court-ordered consent decree on behalf of students in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The plaintiffs, students at some of LAUSD’s most impacted schools, had sued the State and school district over LAUSD’s layoffs of thousands of teachers that fell disproportionately on the most challenged schools, causing such disruption that students’ were denied their constitutional right to equal educational opportunity. The consent decree incorporates broad and sweeping changes that will protect schools similar to those of the plaintiffs’ from hard-hitting reductions in force (RIFs).

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida last week upheld a judgment achieved by a Milbank team for the Firm’s client, the Central Bank of Mongolia (“BOM”). That victory capped a series of judgments in favor of the Central Bank, each in the amount of $69 million plus attorneys’ fees, on RICO, fraud and civil theft claims.

International law firm King & Spalding advised RockTenn Company in its $3.5 billion acquisition of Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation, creating a $9 billion leader in the North American paperboard packaging market.

Global law firm White & Case LLP advised Mexichem SAB de CV, a major Mexican chemical producer, on its US$300 million acquisition of the AlphaGary Plastic Compounding Business Division of Rockwood Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: ROC). This is the second acquisition in which White & Case acted for Mexichem in less than a year.