Aisling Zarraga

Aisling is a corporate partner who advises on a wide range of corporate and commercial matters around the world. Her main areas of practice include public and private M&A, corporate restructurings and joint ventures, acting for a range of listed and international companies.

Aisling acts for companies across a wide range of sectors. In addition, she is the Global Co-Head of Linklaters' Life Sciences and Healthcare Sector and is well-known for her work advising global pharmaceutical companies, biotechs, healthcare services providers and life sciences companies. Aisling also has significant experience in the mining sector, acting on a number of M&A transactions and providing boardroom advice. Aisling is listed as a ‘Leading Individual’ in Legal 500 for ‘Life Sciences and Healthcare’ and ‘Mining and Minerals’.

She has won a number of accolades during her career including featuring in IFLR1000 Women Leaders for a number of years, in Management Today's '35 Women under 35' in 2011 and in The Lawyer magazine 2007 'Hot 100' ranking.

Work highlights

Healthcare work highlights include advising:

• ThermoFisher on its £2.25bn acquisition of The Binding Site Group from Nordic Capital
• McKesson on the sale of its UK business, including Lloyds Pharmacy, to Aurelius
• Gavi, the Vaccines Alliance on the inception and creation of its ground-breaking global COVAX Facility to secure COVID-19 vaccines for 180 countries
• Takeda on: 
• its £46bn recommended offer for Shire plc, the largest ever outbound M&A deal by a Japanese company
• the €350m sale of its haemostasis product TachoSil to Corza Health, Inc.
• the $575 million sale of its core respiratory business to AstraZeneca
• QIAGEN on the acquisition of GE Healthcare’s forensic technology business
• Novartis on its innovative asset swap with GSK, including the sale of its vaccines business to GSK, the purchase of GSK’s oncology business and the contribution of its OTC business to a joint venture with GSK and the disposal of its influenza vaccines business to CSL

Mining highlights include advising:

• Anglo American plc on: 
• its recommended takeover of Sirius Minerals plc
• its acquisition of a 40% stake in De Beers for US$5.1bn from the Oppenheimer family, to increase its stake to 85% majority stake in De Beers 
• the demerger and dual listing of its paper and packaging business, Mondi
• the transfer of its platinum group metals investments to a venture capital fund focused on increasing demand for platinum group metals 

Highlights of Aisling’s wider corporate experience include advising:

• WSP Global Inc on its £1.81bn acquisition of the John Wood Group’s environmental and infrastructure consulting division
• Vodafone Group Plc on the creation of a joint venture company in Greece holding c.5,600 tower infrastructure assets and valued in excess of €700,000,000 
• Vistry plc on its innovative acquisition of the house building and partnerships businesses of Galliford Try plc for shares and cash and the related equity and debt financings
• Mondi plc on its original dual listing structure and subsequent simplification to a premium listing on the LSE with a secondary listing on the JSE

Aisling is a trustee and chair of the governance committee of The Springboard Charity which helps and supports young people and long-term unemployed people into work in the hospitality sector across the UK.

Aisling is also a member of the Women’s Network Forum (WNF) chaired by HRH The Countess of Wessex GCVO. The WNF is a unique network of cross-industry leaders whose goal is the advancement of gender balance and equality, by influencing business leaders, inspiring the next generation and sharing best practice.