Current practice
John Angus has been a partner in the Sydney office of Freehills since 1986. He is a finance specialist whose areas of expertise include structured finance, corporate finance, acquisition finance and project finance.Industry experience
Structured finance
John is one of Australia’s leading cross-border and domestic structured finance experts. His knowledge and experience in this area is not only well known in the Australian structured finance industry, but is also highly regarded internationally.
Clients for whom John acts include lessees/borrowers, sponsors, financiers, equity participants, arrangers and other participants in structured financing transactions. Accordingly, he has obtained a detailed understanding of the issues involved in these transactions from a variety of perspectives. His extensive experience and broad perspective is applied to advancing the interest of his clients.
Transactions John has acted on include:
- advising Australian financial institutions/banks in relation to a number of principal to principal structured investment and financing transactions
- acting for Queensland entities in relation to the implementation and ongoing management of various cross border leasing transactions of rolling stock and power assets out of jurisdictions such as the United States of America, Canada and Sweden
- acting for New South Wales entities in relation to the implementation and ongoing management of various cross border leases of rolling stock and power assets involving jurisdictions such as the United States of America, Canada and Sweden
- advising the arrangers, lessees and other participants in structured domestic and cross border lease transactions for Amcor, David Jones Limited, IBM Australia, BHP Baekert, Mackay Sugar Refinery, Australian Airlines, The Republic of Nauru, Griffin Coal Mine, Mount Thorley mine, Telecom, Waco Kwikform Limited, Murrin Murrin mine and many others.
John was responsible for the structuring, documentation preparation (in most cases), and the primary negotiating role for the clients involved in those transactions.
Other finance areas
John has extensive experience advising arrangers, lenders and borrowers/sponsors in other types of finance including acquisition finance, general corporate finance and property finance. Transactions John has advised on include:
- acting for APA Group in relation to numerous bilateral and syndicated corporate, acquisition and bid financings including its recent $2 billion syndicated refinancing
- acting for APA Group in relation to its US private placement and the associated alignment of the terms and conditions for its existing United States private placement
- acting for AGL in relation to numerous bilateral and syndicated corporate, acquisition and bid financings including the syndicated corporate refinancing associated with the AGL/Alinta scheme of arrangement and restructure
- acting for Singapore Power International Pte Limited in relation to the financing of its participation in the acquisition of the Alinta group
- acting for Babcock & Brown in relation to the financing of its bid for Hobart Airport
- acting for a potential financier to a consortium bidding for the RailCorp PPP rollingstock transaction
- acting for a consortium of AGL and Petronas in relation to the financing aspects of the construction and operation of the proposed PNG pipeline
- acting for a consortium which included AGL in relation to various aspects of the Loy Yang A power station acquisition
- acting for a consortium of AGL, TransAlta and CMS in relation to the financing of its acquisition of a significant interest in the Goldfields gas pipeline
- acting for AGL in relation to the financing aspects of bids for Victoria’s privatised gas utilities
- acting on the financing aspects for a bidding consortium in relation to the privatisation of South Australia’s electricity distributors
- acting on the financing aspects of the float by AGL of certain of its pipeline assets
- acting for the consortium concerned on the financing aspects of a bid for FreightCorp and National Rail
- advising a syndicate of lenders in a structured financing of the acquisition and leaseback of IBM’s head office at Cumberland Forest, and
- acting for Lend Lease on the construction financing of the Dandenong Shopping Centre.
