Tom Morgan is a highly regarded Partner in HWLE’s corporate practice and leads the firm’s national Family Office & Private Wealth Group. He advises family offices, family-owned businesses, founders and ultra-high-net-worth individuals on the structuring, deployment, governance and transition of family capital. Drawing on deep experience in mergers and acquisitions, private equity and capital markets, Tom helps families navigate the opportunities and complexities that arise as wealth is created, invested, transitioned and preserved across generations.
Tom advises families at every stage of the wealth cycle, from wealth creation and business growth through to liquidity events, intergenerational succession and the long-term stewardship of family wealth.
Tom acts as external counsel and a single point of contact for substantial family offices, family-owned enterprises and private clients in Australia and internationally. He advises principals personally as well as their investment and operating entities and leads and coordinates advice across the disciplines that matter to families of significant wealth: transactions, structuring, governance, succession and disputes.
Through HWLE’s national platform, Tom coordinates specialist advice across corporate, tax, property, disputes, regulatory and succession matters. This provides families with a single point of accountability across their legal affairs, working alongside each family’s existing accountants, tax advisers and investment professionals.
His transactional experience includes public and private M&A, IPOs and secondary raisings on ASX, private capital raisings, direct investments and joint ventures, acting across the full breadth of sectors in which Australian family capital is invested. For family clients, that experience extends to acquisitions and divestments of operating businesses, co-investment arrangements, intergenerational ownership transitions, and the governance frameworks that hold family enterprises together.
Tom understands that advising families, ultra-high-net-worth individuals and private clients is different from advising companies. Outcomes must work commercially and hold within the family, and the durability of any structure depends as much on alignment between family members as on the documents themselves. His relationships with clients are typically measured in decades rather than transactions, and his counsel is sought as much for judgment as for technical advice. His approach is pragmatic, direct and discreet; much of his work for family clients is, by its nature, never public. He is often the first call when a question does not sit neatly within any one discipline.
Expertise
Experience
- Issuers on IPOs over a range of sectors Including Nine Entertainment Co. Holdings, Stedfast Group, Fife Capital, Lithium Power International, Sequoia Financial Group, Cobre, OzAurum Resources and Armada Metals.
- The founders of GreenCollar Group Acting in relation to a $250 million sell-down involving KKR to Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
- Genex Power Limited Since its IPO and listing on ASX in 2015, including work on a number of secondary capital raisings and Genex’s $115 million underwritten placement and acelerated entitlement offer in 2021.
- Macquarie Group and Suncorp Group Advising on various hybrid security offerings through ASX in excess of $2 billion.
- A number of private family offices Advising on a range of private investments and acquisitions in the financial services, technology, property, hotel & tourism sectors.
- Various underwriters and lead managers Acting in relation to both initial public offerings and secondary capital raisings.
