Minter Ellison

Mark Standen has more than 25 years' experience in commercial and financial services sector M&A transactions and leads the firm's Financial Services Industry Group. Mark is also a senior member of the our Corporate HQ Advisory Team.

He has a strong practice advising on Corporations Act and Listing Rule compliance, mergers and acquisitions, demutualisations, insurance industry restructuring, joint ventures, and corporate governance issues including directors' and officers' duties and the law of meetings.

Mark also advises government agencies and government owned corporations on restructuring, statutory interpretation, legislative drafting and regulatory and governance issues.

Some long-standing clients include AMP, Allianz, Ausgrid, Medibank, Macquarie and Suncorp.

Mark regularly lectures on corporate law reform, co-authoring titles on Partnerships and Joint Ventures in Halsbury's Laws of Australia, the Joint Venture section of the Australian Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents and the Meetings Chapter of Australian Corporation Law Principles and Practice.

Minter Ellison and Allen & Overy acted as joint legal advisers to the Lloyds Banking Group on the sale of its Australian asset finance business, Capital Finance Australia Ltd (CFAL), and its corporate loan portfolio, BOS International Australia Ltd (BOSI) to Westpac Banking Corporation for approximately A$1.55 billion in total.

Acted for Insurance Australia Group Limited (IAG) on the $1.85 billion acquisition of the Australian and New Zealand insurance underwriting businesses of Wesfarmers Limited, the number 1 and number 5 general insurers in Australia respectively.

Advising the New South Wales Government (NSW Treasury) on the refinancing of Port Botany and Port Kembla in NSW. The project is unique, involving the contemporaneous refinancing and long term lease of two major Australian ports. Our role includes extensive legal analysis of the existing assets and businesses and the regulatory landscape; recommending a transaction structure; drafting special transaction legislation; asset restructuring; preparing extensive interrelated transaction documents; tender process and negotiations; and implementation under legal project management. The project is complex and very significant for NSW.