Andrew Windybank

Andrew offers his corporate clients expertise and specialist support for:

• Business structuring
• Capital raising
• Mergers, acquisitions and divestments
• Private equity transactions

He offers both corporate and private clients advice on:

• Business and commercial law
• Company and trust law
• Contract law (incl sales, procurement and consumer contracts)
• Intellectual property law

Much of the work Andrew becomes involved with has Corporate and Commercial law at its core. He advises company directors and business owners on structuring, acquisition, divestment and merger issues. He also works with companies and family groups on solvency, debt and capital raising matters and has a long history of involvement with intellectual property commercialisation.

During the past 10 years Andrew has been involved with a number of early stage clients and assisted founding shareholders to raise capital and grow their businesses (in Australia and internationally). He has been involved in raising seed funding for companies working in the telecommunications, bio-technology, manufacturing and mining sectors and has participated as a company director for start-up ventures.

Andrew has been involved with several significant private equity transactions including:

• The investment by Advent Private Capital in each of the SCADA Group and UGM Engineers
• The divestment of Hunter IVF to Virtus Health (a Quadrant private equity portfolio company)
• The investment, roll-up and exit transaction for the Tesa Group

The sale of the SCADA Group to Schneider Electric (for $200m, representing a sale price of more than 11 times forecast FY10 EBITA) won an Australian Venture Capital Association award in 2010.

Andrew also led and worked with the team of lawyers who delivered a number of significant private capital raising transactions and provided lead legal services on initial public offering and ASX listings (Coalworks (ASX:CWK) in June2008 and Xanadu Mines (ASX:XAN) in December 2010).

In addition to PE, M&A and Capital Raising matters, clients engage Andrew to prepare and negotiate joint venture, shareholder and commercial arrangements. He necessarily provides advice on contracts and has a range of experience in, among other areas, intellectual property, biotech and agribusiness matters.

“We have engaged Andrew on numerous occasions and will continue to do so in the future. We believe that his ability to combine first rare legal expertise, commercial judgement and strong negotiating skills is rare amongst lawyers and provides us with a real competitive advantage in corporate transactions.”
Robert Radcliffe-Smith, Managing Partner, Advent Partners.

“I enjoyed working with Andrew on the Initial Public Offering and ASX Listing of Xanadu Mines Limited in 2010. Andrew co-ordinated a thorough due diligence process, in Australia and Mongolia, ran a smooth listing transaction and provided timely and clear legal advice to the company. Andrew was an invaluable focal point for all the external advisors. Critically, he was able to harmonise these contributions to produce a quality prospectus.”
Paul Flynn, Former Managing Partner, Ernst & Young, Sydney.

Andrew moved to the Hunter Valley in late 2002 and is now based in Newcastle. He retired as a partner of an Australian national law firm on 30 June 2012, after nearly 10 years and having led that firm’s corporate group, prior to that he was the General Counsel for Lion Nathan Limited’s brewing businesses. He began his career at Mallesons Stephen Jaques in Sydney.

Bachelor of Economics, University of Sydney.
Bachelor of Laws, University of New South Wales.
Masters of International Studies, University of Sydney.
Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice, College of Law.
Admitted as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of NSW.

Office: SWS Lawyers Pty Limited

Web: www.swslawyers.com.au

Email: [email protected]

Please visit our Estate website: windybankestate.com.au

© Andrew Windybank - windybank.com.au