Freehills has won awards for ‘Most Successful Private Business, Turnover >$100m pa’ and ‘Excellence in Community Practices’ at the inaugural BRW ANZ Private Business Awards. The new awards initiative seeks to reward and recognise private companies operating in Australia that excel in their chosen fields. Open to all Australian private businesses across a range of categories, finalists were judged by an independent panel of readers, industry and academic experts.
In speaking of the firm’s accolades, Freehills’ Chief Executive Officer & Managing Partner, Gavin Bell, said the awards are a reflection of the firm’s talented lawyers and quality clients, and reflect a robust and successful year of working on many landmark deals and transactions. He also said that the raft of internal initiatives designed to ensure the firm is operating with optimum efficiency and flexibility, and which help ensure Freehills continues to be a terrific place to work for everybody, will ensure ongoing success for the firm.
“We are at the forefront of emerging issues that affect our clients. In the current climate of economic uncertainty, being a true business adviser and keeping clients abreast of new regulatory reforms, emerging areas of law, changes to policy and legislation and providing commercially astute advice is essential in achieving the best possible outcomes for their businesses,” he said.
Mr Bell said the firm is committed to attracting and retaining the very best people and in doing so, providing them with challenging and rewarding career opportunities. Freehills has a low attrition rate when compared to similar organisations in the industry and the firm’s annual engagement survey score for 2007 was in the Global High Performance Zone (for companies to be included in the Global High Performance Zone they must demonstrate three years’ above industry average performance in Return on Invested Capital or Net Profit Margin combined with very strong employee opinion results).
“We’ve worked particularly hard over the last 12-18 months to implement robust programs to encourage retention, including flexible work practices, coaching and mentoring, training and skills development and a rewards and recognition program.”
Mr Bell also said the Freehills’ unique management structure, comprising Gavin Bell CEO, supported by Peter Butler, Managing Partner, People, and Mark Rigotti, Managing Partner, Clients, was a key differentiator for the firm.
“Our unique management trio structure enables the advancement of the firm’s business objectives and ensures our focus on the key measures of success are achievable and sustainable,” he added.
Freehills’ longstanding commitment to pro bono and community work was also commended by the judging panel for taking charity to ‘another level’. Every year, Freehills assists more than 3,000 clients on a pro bono basis through legal work ranging from transactional matters to litigation.
The Freehills Foundation is about providing pro bono legal services to those who have no other practicable source of legal assistance available and is dedicated to the strategic direction of Freehills’ pro bono responsibilities.
“Pro bono and the community is embedded in the Freehills culture. The absolute philosophy behind the Freehills Foundation is doing something in the public interest and to advocate access to justice,” Pro bono Counsel and Executive Director Freehills Foundation, Annette Bain, said.
Background
As a market leader for commercial services Freehills continues to work on Australia’s largest and most complex deals and transactions, achieving exceptional outcomes for our clients. Some recent examples include:
- Advising Coles Group on its $20 billion acquisition by Wesfarmers, to date this is Australia’s largest scheme of arrangement. The deal was recently awarded the Australasian Legal Business ‘M&A Deal of the Year’ and ‘Australian Deal of the Year 2008’ awards in recognition of deal value, complexity and significance to the market.
- Acting for Bupa Australia on its $2.41 billion merger with MBF to create Australia’s leading private health insurance group. The merger was by way of a scheme of arrangement. This is the biggest deal in the private health insurance industry and one in which many hundreds of thousands of Australians are stakeholders.
- Advising National Hire Group Limited on its successful $2.9 billion scheme of arrangement with the Carlyle Group to acquire Coates Hire Limited. This transaction represents Australia’s largest ever leveraged buy-out of a publicly listed company.
- Advising Singapore Power and Babcock & Brown on its consortium’s $7.9 billion acquisition of Alinta. This deal was one of the most significant infrastructure M&A transactions in Australian history.
- Freehills is advising National Foods on their $910 million proposed acquisition of Dairy Farmers.
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