Current practice

Richard has been a director of Greenwoods & Freehills since 1998. Richard advises on a wide range of corporate tax matters.

Industry experience

Richard has extensive experience in advising on business mergers and acquisitions, company restructures, including capital raising, due diligence investigations and a number of public company listings.

Richard has been closely involved with the venture capital/private equity industry for over eight years, acting for the larger private equity funds in respect of management buy-out transactions and expansion capital investments. Richard's involvement includes pre-sale restructuring, coordinating due diligence, advice in respect of preference share and debt funding including thin capitalisation and debt/equity classification issues, divestment transactions and management equity participation. He has also extensive experience in the establishment of private equity funds, with particular interest in relation to utilising available tax concessions for resident and non-resident investors and structuring the investment executives' carried interests.

Richard's work in the area has included advising on the acquisition of the MCK Pacific Group from McKecknie plc, the acquisition of Australian Geographic from the Fairfax Group, the acquisition of Olex Cables from Pacific Dunlop, structuring the executive share scheme arrangements for the Sheridan Group, the acquisition of Repco from Pacific Dunlop, and the acquisition of the Edwards Dunlop paper business from Paperlinx.

Professional background

Following a three-year period working in the tax division of an international accounting firm in Sydney, Richard practised for three years in the United Kingdom, where he specialised in international tax. During that time, Richard gained extensive experience in the structuring of international corporate groups and their transactions.

Richard holds Bachelor of Economics and Master of Taxation degrees from the University of Sydney. He is an associate of the Taxation Institute of Australia and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia.

Richard has played an active role in the development of aspects of Australia's recent tax reform and is a member of the Joint Design Team on tax consolidation which meets regularly with the ATO and Treasury.