Clifford Chance (CC) and Latham & Watkins have bagged the mandates on the $1.3bn (£770m) cash sale of German engineering group Siemens’ hospital IT business to US provider Cerner.

The two firms are expected to enter a strategic alliance linking Cerner’s health IT business and Siemens’s medical devices and imaging arm in the first quarter of 2015, subject to regulatory approval.