Japanese drugmakers seem to have developed a taste for overseas acquisitions. This year saw Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. make an $8.8 billion offer for Cambridge, Mass.-based Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Daiichi Sankyo Co. Ltd. pursue a majority stake in India's Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd., priced between $3.4 billion and $4.6 billion. The latest play: Shionogi & Co. Ltd.'s announcement on Sept. 1 that it intends to buy Atlanta-based Sciele Pharma Inc. for $1.4 billion in cash.

The Japanese pharmaceuticals manufacturer tapped a binational set of advisers for the deal. At Goldman, Sachs & Co., Jason Haas and Amit Hasija, based in New York, and Kunihiro Takahashi and Naoki Toyoizumi, based in Tokyo, are working on the deal. For legal counsel, Shionogi went with a team from Davis Polk & Wardwell with Tokyo-based partner Theodore Paradise and New York-based lawyer Michael Davis in the lead. Paradise, who has been in Davis Polk's Tokyo office since 1991, is admitted to the New York bar and qualified as Gaikokuho-Jimu-Bengoshi, or Foreign Special Member, of the Daiichi Tokyo Bar Association. Davis also has a Japan connection -- he received an LL.B. from University of Tokyo in 1996 -- though he is not part of the bar there.