The London practice provides an important link to the Asia Pacific and is the firm’s gateway to the United Kingdom and Europe. The office was opened in 1976 to service leading financial institutions and corporate clients. Today Mallesons regularly advises clients on mergers and acquisitions, corporate advisory, banking and finance, debt capital markets and securitisation matters. The London office is an important part of our international practice, supporting our international clients in conjunction with our offices in Australia, China and Hong Kong. It also gives us the capacity to represent the firm’s key clients in the UK and Europe.
Mallesons’ London-based lawyers practice both English and Australian law.
The London office of Mallesons Stephen Jaques has three partners and a total compliment of 15 lawyers. The office is headed by Robert Hanley, who specialises in mergers and acquisitions and other corporate work. Rowan Russell and Adrienne Showering focus on banking and finance and debt capital markets work.
Our offices in the Asia Pacific and London are closely interconnected. We routinely use teams across our different offices to resource transactions with a cross-border element, and can utilise our network to access legal knowledge and resources in transactions involving multiple jurisdictions.
Background
Our corporate lawyers advise on cross-border mergers and acquisitions and corporate work including regulatory compliance, acquisitions, divestments, joint ventures, private equity, partnerships and co-ownership structures, long-term supply agreements, restructurings and corporate governance, IPOs and other capital raising activities.
We regularly act in relation to the Australian implications for international companies restructuring their global businesses as well as the UK and Australian consequences of Australian and Asian businesses expanding into Europe.
Our work often involves the innovative and sophisticated restructuring of companies and corporate groups including share sales, the spinout of businesses, equity restructurings and debt for equity swaps.
Our team are involved in a wide range of financing transactions, including bilateral and syndicated lending, and asset based financing and structured finance. We also act in relation to derivative transactions and advise on ISDA documents and provide Australian law opinions to ICMA and SLRC.
Cross border aircraft financings: Over the past year, we have been involved with several cross border aircraft financings which have required coordinating English law and Australian law documents.
We offer clients our international experience in structuring, negotiating, documenting and advising on the full range of debt capital markets products, including commercial paper and listed and unlisted euro medium term note programs and bond issues, structured products including credit linked notes and CDOs and hybrid securities, including Tier 1 and Tier 2 securities for regulated institutions.
Our team also advise on the full range of equity, debt equity-linked, hybrid, asset-backed, credit-linked and derivative products.
Hybrid securities: We recently executed a listed Tier 1 deal for a major Australian bank and several listed medium term note programs and undertook the UKLA listing for these programs.
Kangaroo bonds: An important part of our capital markets practice relates to the issuing of kangaroo bonds. Kangaroo bonds are bonds issued in the Australian domestic capital markets by foreign issuers as they seek to diversify their investor base in the global markets. During a 12-month period, we acted for issuers and arranger/lead managers in the UK, Germany, Norway, France, Luxembourg, Italy, Canada, Austria and Holland to establish programs or to undertake specific issues of bonds.
We advise clients on UK-based and international securitisation transactions involving asset classes such as real property, mortgages, lease receivables and other synthetic securitisation and derivative products. Our lawyers have a strong track record across the full spectrum of capital markets work and intimate knowledge of the local and international markets, including rating agency requirements.
We have expertise in complex transactions, such as credit-linked synthetic structures, net interest margin transactions and privatisation-related structures.
“The London office is particularly recommended for banking, finance and capital markets transactions…The team has advised a number of high-profile clients such as telecoms company Telstra, Westpac and Macquarie Bank.”
Legal 500 2008