Covington Advises Ziylo on Acquisition by Novo Nordisk

LONDON—Covington has advised Ziylo on its acquisition by Novo Nordisk with a potential deal value that could exceed $800 million.

Ziylo, a University of Bristol spin-out company based at the Unit DX science incubator, is a supramolecular chemistry company that has developed a third 'biomimetic' class of glucose binding molecules. The acquisition gives Novo Nordisk, a Danish multinational pharmaceutical company, full rights to Ziylo's glucose binding molecule platform to develop glucose responsive insulins and reduce the burden of diabetes for people living with the medical condition.

As part of the transaction, Covington also advised on the formation of a new company called Carbometrics Limited, to which Ziylo spun-out certain assets and granted an exclusive license to develop applications in diagnostics and continuous glucose monitoring.

The Covington team was led by James Gubbins and Ben Land-Maycock (corporate) and Morag Peberdy and Winsome Cheung (life science transactions and IP). Support was provided by Sunjay Malhotra, Sana Ahmad (corporate), Guy Dingley and Matt Beech (tax), Richard Surtees (corporate and share incentives) and Antonio Michaelides (employment).