October 12, 2021
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Over the past few years we have observed a trend in companies seeking to outsource (and monetize) certain core, best-in-class processes. These transactions, dubbed “lift-outs”, include examples such as insurance companies lifting-out their insurance claims processing capabilities, medical device companies lifting-out their medical device manufacturing capabilities, and pharmaceutical companies lifting-out their research and development capabilities.
While the benefits of these transactions are potentially significant, lift-outs are complex and require a broad array of legal disciplines, such as technology, corporate, tax, privacy, real estate, intellectual property, and employment law specialists, often in multiple jurisdictions. They also demand a significant amount of effort and advance planning in order to address issues such as pricing, governance, change management, limits on liability, indemnification obligations, intellectual property rights, termination rights, and exit rights, among others. As a result, successful lift-out transactions require robust legal expertise in order to document and support the long term goals, opportunities and arrangements of the parties.
From a legal perspective, many of the challenges that arise from lift-out transactions stem from the fact that lift-outs are a hybrid of several better known transactions, namely IT outsourcing transactions, business process outsourcing transactions and carve-out divestiture transactions. While lift-outs have elements that on their face look familiar to either an outsourcing attorney or M&A attorney, these elements and issues are often not addressed in a traditional manner. As such, understanding how to address these elements is critical to a successful lift-out transaction. This alert will discuss several of these key elements.
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