McDermott Will & Schulte, a global law firm

Kristian (Krist) Werling is the global head of McDermott’s Health & Life Sciences practice, which provides regulatory and transactional counsel to health and life sciences industry leaders, changemakers, and investors.

Krist and the McDermott Health & Life Sciences team lead the most significant transactions, critical regulatory issues, and litigation matters that shape the health and life sciences industry. In his own practice, Krist represents life sciences companies, health service providers, private equity firms, and venture capital investors in a wide variety of transactional and regulatory matters. He has led cutting-edge industry transactions that have introduced cancer and gene therapy products to the global market, expanded access to fertility services, increased the availability of cost-effective outpatient surgical services, and transformed the delivery of physician services in a broad range of specialties.

Krist's decades of experience on the buy-side and sell-side of health and life sciences dealmaking spans the healthcare and life sciences landscape. He leads cross-disciplinary teams and delivers business-focused legal guidance to help clients pursue their most innovative strategies, working across borders and health and life sciences subsectors to connect and advise industry stakeholders. Krist is also skilled at developing creative transaction structures, conducting sector-specific due diligence, and providing forward-looking counsel to mitigate issues that can derail transactions or stunt long-term growth. His deep understanding of sector-specific regulatory nuances allows him to efficiently close transactions and maximize client outcomes.

Representative PE clients include Ampersand Capital Partners (buy-side and sell-side); Amulet Capital Partners (buy-side and sell-side); Windrose Health Investors (buy-side and sell-side M&A, and joint venture matters); Iron Path Capital (investments, carve-out acquisitions and new platform formations), Quad-C (new platform formation and investment and sell-side), PPC (buy-side).

Representative healthcare and life sciences companies include Baxter International and Vanda Pharmaceuticals (cross-border sales and acquisitions; licensing); REGENXBIO (strategic partnership with AbbVie); Cleveland Clinic, Hospital for Special Surgery and Northwestern Medicine (strategic innovation investments and joint ventures); numerous founder-owned businesses in strategic transactions with investors.

David A. Cifrino focuses his practice on corporate and transactional matters, primarily representing public and private financial services, industrial, technology, consumer products and other businesses ranging in size from start-ups to Fortune 50 multinationals, in securities, merger, acquisition, disposition, commercial, strategic, governance and executive compensation matters. He also represents clients in public and privately placed equity and debt financings under the Securities Act of 1933 and counsels public companies on the full range of securities compliance issues under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. In 2021 and 2022, David was a Fellow and Senior Fellow in Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative, where he primarily focused on corporate sustainability and environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

David also provides advice regarding the Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank Acts, including related Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and stock exchange rulemaking with respect to financial and other disclosure, auditor independence, insider securities transaction reporting, executive compensation, director independence and requirements for audit, compensation and governance committees.

Prior to entering the practice of law, David held several positions in broadcast journalism, including as a producer and manager of the Boston bureau of CBS News where he was responsible for reporting, producing and writing news stories appearing on national programs, including the CBS Evening News and Face the Nation.

Raminta Dereskeviciute focuses her practice on product compliance, trade regulation (sanctions and export controls) and ESG. She has significant experience in advising on EU and UK chemical legislation (REACH), product safety and liability rules and frequently represents clients before the European Chemicals Agency Board of Appeal. Raminta also advises businesses on the implications Brexit has in relation to a range of regulatory compliance issues.

Raminta counsels clients on the EU and the UK sanctions regimes and export controls, including in higher risk jurisdictions such as Russia and Iran. Her experience covers the review and design of compliance programs, including giving training to client teams on controlled goods, prohibited jurisdictions, persons and activities. Raminta assists companies in liaising with regulators when assessing whether their activities are in breach of EU or UK sanctions regimes, or whether authorisations / licenses from the national authorities are appropriate. Raminta has participated as a chair and speaker on sanctions related panels at the Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime.

Raminta has a peerless grasp of EU chemicals, metals and mining policy, including conflict minerals legislation and the issues surrounding ethical supply chain management for these industries. She also advises companies and trade associations on the European Commission’s Chemical Strategy for Sustainability, building upon her long standing experience on legislative developments in the field of chemicals (REACH, CLP, GHS, WFD, Seveso III, RoHS, WEEE and others).  Raminta devises compliance and crisis management programs and assists global industrial products manufacturers with international product recalls. Raminta featured  in Chemical Watch, Bloomberg Environment and numerous other publications discussing EU chemicals and environmental policy, industry compliance and Member State enforcement as well as implications that Brexit will have on various stakeholders. She is a contributor to the most comprehensive book published on REACH, “Best Practice Guide to Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006”, by Beck/Hart.