• public offerings by retail and wholesale funds and companies, including listed and unlisted IPOs, product disclosure statements and prospectuses, placements and underwritings
• structuring and establishing wholesale and retail funds, including property trusts, feeder funds, funds offering hybrid securities, hedge funds and various structured products, including deferred purchase agreements and warrants
• listed and private acquisitions and disposals including privatisations, schemes of arrangement and trust schemes
• capital management including shareholder agreements, capital reductions, redemptions, restructures and reorganisations
• general funds management advice in relation to operating schemes, meetings, changing the RE, entrenchment, trust deeds, stapling, registry agreements and other outsourcing and supply agreements, and 
• general corporate and commercial advice in relation to trust law, contracts law, the Corporations Act and the ASX listing rules.

Major projects

Fiona has advised a number of international and Australian clients, including:

• Credit Suisse in relation to the sale of an Australian funds management and property mandate business to Challenger in May 2010
• AllianceBernstein in relation to AMP’s and NAB’s proposed change of control transactions relating to AXA Asia Pacific Holdings
• China Investment Corporation (CIC) in relation to its $500 million cornerstone investment in the Goodman Group and its $200 million debt investment in the Goodman Group. These investments were  key components of Goodman Group’s recapitalisation in 2009 which was the joint winner of FinanceAsia’s Most Innovative Deal Award in 2009
• Credit Suisse in relation to structuring, and the offer and underlying documentation for, a number of Credit Suisse structured products. These products ranged from an innovative deferred purchase agreement with an embedded loan capable of use by superannuation trustees to a limited partnership fund offering private equity exposure to wholesale investors, to registered managed investment schemes offering exposure to various assets or indices
• the establishment and launch of Australian feeder funds for Morgan Stanley’s MSREF VII property fund, which raised more than US$6 billion in 2008
• ANZ and Credit Suisse on the establishment of their deferred purchase agreement programs
• Trust Company in connection with its roles as trustee or responsible entity in relation to many trusts, including the PaperlinX and Dyno Nobel hybrid trusts, the Max Trust and ten Astarra funds
• Citi in relation to its range of structured products including listed and unlisted deferred purchase agreements and listed warrants, and 
• United Group Ltd on its acquisition of the ALSTOM transport businesses in Australia and New Zealand.

Major clients

Fiona’s clients include:

• AllianceBernstein
• ANZ
• Bendigo and Adelaide Bank
• CIC
• Citi
• Credit Suisse 
• Deutsche Bank AG
• DEXUS 
• Fortius
• Hastings 
• Investa
• Kerry Group plc
• Macquarie Bank
• Mirvac
• Morgan Stanley
• Trust Company
• United Group

Fiona holds a degree in law from the University of Nottingham, England and a Master of Laws from the University of New South Wales.  Fiona joined the Sydney office of Freehills in 1998 and participates in the firm’s pro bono program.

Before joining Freehills, Fiona worked in London and gained several years of English capital markets and mergers & acquisitions experience.

Fiona is recognised as a ‘leading investment funds lawyer’ in Australia by PLC and was named as one of Australia’s ‘best funds management lawyers’ in the Best Lawyers peer review survey in 2010.