Professional biography
Nicola Wakefield Evans is Managing Partner, International of Mallesons Stephen Jaques. Based in Hong Kong, she specialises in mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, corporate governance and corporate matters.
Nicola has acted for some of Australia's largest corporations and for international companies including Lion Nathan, BHP Billiton, Macquarie Bank, AMP, GE, Morgan Stanley, Sabre, Inc., Universal Studios and a number of PRC companies, and has held a number of relationship partner roles for the firm's key clients.
Nicola has been involved in significant transactions in the energy and resources, financial services, private equity, media, technology and communications sectors. She has experience negotiating and documenting corporate transactions including company and business transactions, joint ventures and restructurings, capital raisings and takeovers.
A key member of the firm's corporate governance group, Nicola has experience in providing strategic advice to company boards on the conduct of meetings, director and senior executive remuneration, directors indemnities and board composition. She has written papers and given seminars on corporate governance, directors duties generally and directors duties during insolvency and takeovers and on corporate issues in the energy and resources industry.
Nicola is rated by a number of publications as one of Australia's leading M&A, corporate governance/commercial and media lawyers. She was nominated as a leading lawyer in Corporate Governance in the 2009 edition of Legal Media Group 's Guide to the World's Leading Lawyers and also in IFLR's Guide to the World's Leading Corporate Governance Lawyers 2009 for Hong Kong.
Nicola has been praised as "among the best of the best from Australia" by Australasian Legal Business (ALB) 2008. In 2009, she was recognised in ALB's Hot 100 for the Asia Region: "In an industry where glass ceilings are conspicuous, Wakefield Evans can be widely commended for being among a rare few to have broken through it. Wakefield Evans has also built the profile of the Australian-based firm to a level where it is rivalling US and UK firms, for a share of the most lucrative Chinese-related work."
Nicola recently co-authored an article published by the International Bar Association (IBA) corporate and M&A Law Committee 2009 - Australia: Squeeze-Out Guide.
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Areas of expertise