David McElhone

|Partner

David is a real estate lawyer with more than 25 years' experience in a wide range of property transactions and financing of them. In the recession of the early 1990s, David began acting extensively for banks and receivers in advising on insolvency restructures, appointments and enforcements, and continues to do so. This included acting for Westpac, ANZ, CBA, State Bank of NSW and other financiers.

The receiver and mortgagee sales have included office blocks, shopping centres, residential properties, hotels, retirement villages and partially complete property developments.

David regularly deals in large leasing agreements for corporate head offices, commercial, retail and industrial buildings. He has drafted lease portfolio precedents for Investa, Westpac and ANZ, and acted in the leasing and construction of two Sydney buildings for American Express’ Australian headquarters, Westpac's Sydney and Melbourne headquarters, and for landlords for large leases to Morgan Stanley, Telstra, UBS, Allens Arthur Robinson and JP Morgan.

David is a real estate lawyer with more than 25 years’ experience in wide-ranging property developments, transactions and investment structuring across diverse asset types. David has a strong focus on liquor licensing as part of his hotels and tourism practice.

This includes advising on the liquor licensing aspects of hotel acquisitions, including Independent Pub Group, the Hedley Hotel float, Austotel's (now ALH) large pub portfolio, Westfield on its Bondi Junction redevelopment involving licensed premises, Coles Myer on obtaining a liquor licence for Sydney Central, the Westin Hotel Sydney on applying for a liquor licence and subsequent licence variations and Qantas on its national liquor licensing requirements.

David’s leading property development expertise covers large agreements for lease, tax and stamp duty effective structures, strata and community schemes, joint ventures and property financing. He is experienced across all forms of general property including retirement villages and aged care, and hotel and tourism developments. David has been involved in numerous major projects such as King Street Wharf, Rhodes Waterside, Discovery Point, Westpac's Sydney and Melbourne headquarters, American Express Sydney headquarters, and a large community scheme at Morpeth.

David has extensive dealings in property acquisitions and disposals spanning commercial, residential, retail and industrial properties, retirement villages, aged care facilities, and hotels. His expertise includes foreign investment, property trusts and their financing. David’s deal highlights include acting for SAS Trustee Corporation on the sale of over A$1 billion worth of properties into a property trust; Westfield and Deutsche’s acquisition of the Westfield Mount Druitt Shopping Centre; AMP’s acquisition of the A$450 million MEPC portfolio; Macquarie Group’s $641 million acquisition of the Zig Inge retirement village portfolio, and the purchase of the Shangri La Hotel Sydney.

David is a real estate lawyer with more than 25 years' experience in a wide-range of property transactions and financing of them. In the recession of the early 1990s, David began acting extensively for banks and receivers in advising on insolvency restructures, appointments and enforcements, and continues to do so. This included acting for Westpac, ANZ, CBA, State Bank of NSW and other financiers.

The receiver and mortgagee sales have included office blocks, shopping centres, residential properties, hotels, retirement villages and partially complete property developments.

David is a real estate lawyer with more than 25 years’ experience in a wide range of property developments, transactions and investment structuring across diverse asset types. David has extensive experience in real estate investment trusts, foreign investment, joint ventures and other contractual and financing arrangements. tax and stamp duty effective structures. He was the principal lawyer in establishing Australian Unity's Retirement Village Property Fund, he acted for SAS Trustee Corporation in selling $1 billion of properties into a property trust, he advised on the Hedley Hotels float, he acted for Deutsche on the Macquarie Parks Property Trust and for Macquarie Group for various MREEF trusts.

David has more than 25 years' experience advising the retirement village and aged care industry and is recognised as a leader in the field. Acting for developers and operators across Australia, David’s expertise encompasses establishment, operation, financing, village and site acquisitions, titling, joint ventures and retirement village trusts, scheme structuring and documentation, tribunal appearances, compliance, and ongoing management issues. David also advises major institutions on the provisions of the Aged Care Act and on acquisitions of aged care portfolios.

He is a trusted advisor to industry leaders including Lend Lease, Australian Unity, FKP and Aevum, David was part of the Minter Ellison team that compiled the first ever Australian and New Zealand Retirement Villages Legislation Compendium, a comprehensive reference guide to key legislation regulating the industry.

He sits on the NSW Committee of the NSW Retirement Villages Association and the UDIA Seniors Living Committee and regularly speaks at industry conferences.

Chambers Asia Pacific refers to David as an expert in work relating to retirement villages.

David is a real estate lawyer with more than 25 years’ experience in wide-ranging property developments, transactions and investment structuring across diverse asset types, with a strong focus on hotels and tourism.

He acted for SGIC on the acquisition of the Shangri-La Hotel, Sydney, Rydges Hotels on the acquisition of the Townsville and Gladstone Hotels, the proposed float of the Peppers Group, the near $1 billion float of Hedley Hotels, Austotel (now ALH Group) on its large hotel portfolio, IPG on its Australia-wide pub portfolio, and CRI on a serviced apartment hotel development at North Ryde.

Chambers Asia Pacific refers to David as expert in work relating to hotels.