Overview
Legal innovation with a strong commercial focus distinguishes Freehills in the fields of M&A and corporate advisory, capital raising and privatisation. We also advise clients in relation to the increasingly important area of corporate governance.
Our involvement in landmark transactions is due to an unrivalled network of experienced practitioners, advanced knowledge management systems and relationships with key advisers, regulators and opinion leaders across a number of key industries.
Clients benefit from internationally recognised industry experts who understand the market and regulatory conditions for a range of specialised areas, including financial services, media, technology and communications and energy and resources.
Because we understand that commercial outcomes require integrated legal solutions, we deliver relevant services such as expert tax, competition law and employee relations advice as part of a total response to our clients' needs.
With more than 250 M&A and corporate practitioners operating in teams throughout Australia and South-East Asia, our capacity to undertake large-scale transactions is second to none.
Recent highlights
Freehills Corporate has been involved in the following most recent landmark deals, including acting on:
- Wesfarmers’ $20 billion acquisition of Coles Group. The deal was completed through a scheme of arrangement, which followed an extensive, worldwide sales process
- CEMEX’s $17.5 billion acquisition of Rinker Group, creating one of the world’s largest and most profitable building materials companies
- Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s issue of Perpetual Exchangeable Resaleable Listed Securities (PERLS IV) $1.47 billion hybrid offer, Australia’s largest ever franked hybrid security
- Promina Group on its $7.87 billion merger with Suncorp Metway, one of the largest ever financial sector mergers in Australian corporate history
- Babcock & Brown, in a consortium with Singapore Power, on its innovative $7.9 billion acquisition of Alinta and associated equity and hybrid issuance by a number of Babcock & Brown managed funds, one of the highest profile infrastructure M&A transactions in Australian history, and
- The largest leveraged buy out of a listed company in Australian history - National Hire Group Limited’s successful $2.9 billion scheme of arrangement with The Carlyle Group to acquire Coates Hire Limited
How we rate
We are consistently rated as one of Australia's leading law firms measured against international benchmarksLegal Guides
- Freehills has once again received top ranking in the following categories from Chambers Global 2007:
- Corporate/M&A
- Energy and Resources
- Equity Capital Markets
- and commendations for
- Telecommunications, Media and Technology, and
- Intellectual Property
- We have also received top ranking from benchmarking publication PLC Which Lawyer? 2007 in the following categories:
- Corporate/M&A
- Equity Capital Markets
- Private Equity / Venture Capital
- Intellectual Property
Awards
- Freehills won M&A Law Firm of the Year at the 2007 Australian Law Awards, in addition to awards in another five categories, including Law Firm of the Year.
- Our Capital Markets team was awarded Australian Deal Team of the Year at the 2006 ALB Australasian Law Awards.
- Freehills won the 2006 CFO Magazine Corporate Legal Services Firm of the Year award.
- INSTO 2007 M&A Deal of the Year: Suncorp-Metway/Promina
- CFO Magazine 2007 M&A Deal of the Year: Suncorp-Metway/Promina
- FinanceAsia 2007 Best M&A Deal: Wesfarmers/Coles, A$20.3 billion acquisition
League Tables
- The most recent Thomson Financial M&A League Tables for Australia and New Zealand show that Freehills has repeated its performance of 2004, 2005 and 2006 with a clean sweep of the completed tables for the 2007 calendar year. We are the first law firm to achieve this. Freehills acted on more completed M&A deals for a higher combined value than any other Australian and New Zealand law firm since the inception of the league tables in 1997.
- Highest number and value of announced deals 2004–2007
According to the most recent Bloomberg IPO & Hybrid League Tables Australia and New Zealand, Freehills is:
- Ranked #1 in value of hybrids 2005–2007
- Ranked #1 in number of hybrids 2005–2007
- The most recent Bloomberg League Tables show that we helped clients raise more capital via IPO than any other Australian law firm from 2004 - 2007.
- The Bloomberg League Tables also show that we also acted on more hybrid capital raisings for a higher deal value than our Australian competition for the fourth consecutive year. In 2007 we were again ranked number one for hybrid capital raisings in Australia with 40.2% of market share.
For detailed information on our experience, view our experience.