10 December 2009
Key Points:
Up in lights
This year we were excited to be named joint winner of the Best Australian Law Firm of the Year award at the 2009 International Legal Alliance Summit and Awards held in Paris, France on 18 June.
Clayton Utz was one of nine Australian firms short-listed for the Award – known as the Gold Award – and one of 200 international independent law firms competing to be named best law firm in their respective countries. Each year Gold Awards are presented to the best independent law firms of the year in various domestic markets based on a number of criteria including deal record, financial performance, general firm strategy, and management and leadership.
Our new Sydney home underway
May of this year marked a major milestone in the construction of our Sydney office's new home, with the first concrete pour for the basement level of the building.
Chief Executive Partner David Fagan, Sydney managing partner Julie Levis and National Director of Operations and Planning Sam Catanzariti attended a ceremony on the site situated at 1 Bligh Street – just across the road from our current Sydney premises at 1 O'Connell.
The building has been designed to achieve a 6 Star Green Star rating with project completion expected in mid 2011.
Australia's first desalination plant a major project for CU
In a truly multidisciplinary and cross-office effort, Melbourne Projects partners Dan Fitts, Marcus Davenport and Naomi Kelly led a CU team in advising our client AquaSure consortium – comprising Suez Environnement, Degremont, Thiess and Macquarie Capital Group – on its successful bid to build the country's largest desalination plant at Wonthaggi in Victoria, a multibillion dollar project.
The transaction is significant for being the first Public Private Partnership to achieve financial close since the start of the global financial crisis. A CU team worked alongside the AquaSure consortium throughout the bid process, providing strategic and commercial advice on both the bidding documentation and financing arrangements for the project, as well as onthe finalising and signing of the Project Deed in late July as part of the bid process. Construction of the project is underway.
IPO market recovery marks busy period for our equity capital markets team
Renewed confidence in Australia's capital markets has seen strong levels of activity in our Equity Capital Markets practice across the firm and our involvement in a number of major ECM deals.
CU teams have advised on a number of Initial Public Offerings over the last few months including those of Myer Limited, Kathmandu, and carsales.com Limited as well as Goodman Group's $1.8 billion capital raising, Bank of Queensland's $340 million capital raising, Grange Resources' $167 million capital raising, Stockland Group's $2 billion placement, FKP's $324 million capital raising, Transpacific Industries' $800 million+ capital raising and Asciano Group's landmark $2.35 billion raising.
Equity Capital Markets practice head Greg James said it was great to see progressive levels of confidence returning to the Australian capital markets, which started some months ago with the wave of secondary raisings by the banks and large caps. "Australian capital markets were among the first globally to re-ignite in this way and the volume of capital raised in this period was quite remarkable," he said.
We're part of history with AIMSC launch
Our CEP David Fagan and Pro Bono partner David Hillard attended a launch dinner in Canberra earlier this year for the Australian Indigenous Minority Supplier Council (AIMSC), of which the firm is a founding member.
AIMSC is a new Federal Government initiative that aims to help boost Indigenous business participation and create sustainable jobs for Indigenous Australians by fostering commercial relationships between Indigenous businesses and Australia's corporate sector. As part of AIMSC's Supplier Diversity trial we recently appointed Message Stick Group as our new teleconference provider. Message Stick is an Australian business founded by Indigenous businessman Michael McLeod – the driving force behind the AIMSC project.
CU joins a number of Australian companies and businesses that have registered their support for AIMSC, which will be piloted over the next three years and is based on similar initiatives in the US, Canada and the UK. The firm's involvement in AIMSC is consistent with our development of a Reconciliation Action Plan by February 2010, which will set out our commitment as a firm to helping reducing inequality between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
Appointments
Our partners continue to be appointed to senior positions with various government and private sector bodies and associations.
