Michael is our energy and resources sector lead who predominantly acts for entities active in the minerals, energy, mining and energy services and commodities sectors; with particular expertise advising in the areas of mergers and acquisitions, inbound foreign investment, general corporate and commercial, equity capital markets and energy and resources law.
Michael has considerable multi-jurisdictional and multi-commodity experience that spans all aspects of energy and resources projects from acquisition, structuring, financing and implementation to on-going development, operation and divestment. As well as negotiating and documenting transactions, Michael provides advice on tenure, regulatory compliance and approvals together with commercial, corporate, governance, strategy and technical legal matters that arise for project stakeholders.
Michael holds a Master of Laws (Corporate, Energy and Resources) from the University of Melbourne, post graduate qualifications in Applied Finance (Kaplan) and Company Directorship (AICD) together with a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Psychology from Murdoch University.
Michael is the national Vice President of the Energy and Resources Law Association and has been identified as a leading lawyer in Business and Commercial Law in Doyle’s Guide.
Expertise
Experience
- Numerous companies Acting on acquisitions, divestments or reorganisations, via scheme of arrangement.
- Numerous mining companies Advising on their acquisition and/or divestment in part or all of their interest in mining resource assets and tenure in multiple jurisdictions.
- Numerous energy companies Advising on their acquisition and/or divestment in part or all of their interest in LNG portfolio assets.
- An international trading house Advising on various LNG SPAs and flow through GSAs for LNG supply and regasification through a multi-user third party tolling facility.
- Numerous resources companies Assisting with their pre-IPO structuring, funding and acquisitions; IPO as well as secondary capital raisings to support continuation of their projects.
- Numerous energy and resources companies Providing advice on Australia’s foreign investment rules including obtaining Foreign Investment Review Board clearance as part of their energy and resources transactions.
- Numerous energy and resources companies Advising on their operational agreements – joint venture, farm-in, split commodity, royalty, streaming, offtake, charterparty, marketing, lifting and balancing, services agreements, etc.
