Chapman Tripp - Latest News

SEARCH

Latest News

Chapman Tripp lawyers are regarded as leaders in their fields, and are often called upon to give commentary on legal issues. To see articles we have written, please visit our Resource Library. The Events page lists our lawyers’ up-coming speaking engagements.

Please contact Caroline Eddy for media enquiries.

ALB Australasian Law Awards - finalists announced

The ALB Australasian Law Awards 2008 recognise and promote outstanding professional achievement and the best legal work of 2007, across both Australia and New Zealand. Chapman Tripp is proud sponsor of the award for the New Zealand In-house Team of the Year.

We wish to congratulate those companies who have been named finalists in this award for 2008:

	Auckland International Airport
	Contact Energy
	Fonterra Co-operative Group
	Telecom New Zealand
	Westpac New Zealand

The winning in-house team will have played a significant role in achieving completion of a number of major transactions for its employer.

This year’s awards ceremony will be held in Sydney on Thursday 22 May.

Chapman Tripp finalist in three categories
Chapman Tripp has been nominated as a finalist in three categories at the ALB Australasian Law Awards 2008:

	New Zealand Deal Team of the Year – Chapman Tripp Corporate M&A
	New Zealand Dealmaker of the Year - John Strowger
	CSR Firm of the Year

In addition two deals in which Chapman Tripp was involved are finalists:

	Wesfarmers' acquisition of Coles (finalist for the M&A Deal of the Year)
	Boart Longyear IPO (finalist for the Equity Market Deal of the Year)

Brook Asset Management winner of Chapman Tripp Equity Fund Manager of the Year award

Brook Asset Management Limited was awarded the Chapman Tripp Equity Fund Manager of the Year award at the National Business Review 2008 INFINZ Industry Awards in Wellington on Wednesday 16 April, 2008.

Nominees for the Award were assessed across a range of criteria, including people, performance, organisation and products, with background assessment work undertaken by actuarial consultants, Melville Jessup Weaver.

The judges, Mark Weaver, Phil Williams, Deepak Gupta and Paul Hocking, were unanimous in giving the award to Brook. In addition to producing the best outcome based upon the assessment criteria, Brook was also judged to stand out for its strong advocacy role.

Mark Brighouse, Managing Director of Brook Asset Management, says the company is delighted to be selected for the Award.

“We believe this Award reflects our rigorous investment process, talented team of people and the strong results we have achieved for clients”.

AMP Capital Investors and AllianceBerstein New Zealand were finalists for the Equity Fund Manager of the Year award.

INFINZ is the Institute of Finance Professionals New Zealand - the industry body for professionals working and participating in the financial and capital markets of New Zealand.


Related practice areas	Managed funds

Chapman Tripp leading advisor in preference share offers

Chapman Tripp has recently demonstrated its strength in advising on preference share offers, having acted for the issuers on the two major public offerings of hybrid securities that have been completed this year.

Partner John Sproat and principal Alan Lester worked with BNZ and National Australia Bank on the public offer by BNZ Income Securities (BNZIS) of perpetual non-cumulative shares, worth just under NZ$450 million. Partner Casey Plunket and senior solicitor Jarrod Walker advised on the tax aspects of the offer. This was a Tier 1 capital raising for National Australia Bank and BNZ, under both Australian and New Zealand prudential standards. BNZIS is a portfolio investment entity and a portfolio listed company for tax purposes. The share issue is the first retail offer by a portfolio listed company, and the first NZX-listed portfolio listed company issue in New Zealand.

Partners Geof Shirtcliffe and Matt Yarnell, senior solicitor Emma Sutcliffe, and solicitor Peter Wright also worked with Bay of Plenty Regional Council on the public offer of perpetual preference shares in its subsidiary Quayside Holdings Limited (owner of 55% of Port of Tauranga). This innovative offer allowed the Council to leverage its indirect investment in Port of Tauranga without selling its majority holding. The Council raised NZ$200 million from the offer, which it intends to invest in infrastructure projects in the Bay of Plenty region.


Related people	Casey Plunket, Geof Shirtcliffe, John Sproat, Alan Lester, Emma Sutcliffe, Jarrod Walker

Overdue digital copyright reform comes to New Zealand

On Tuesday (April 8) Parliament passed the Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Bill. The changes are designed to better protect creative works which are ever increasingly stored electronically and disseminated in digital format.

However, Chapman Tripp IP specialist, Matt Sumpter, believes the law reform falls short of the mark.

“It under-protects copyright and it’s out of stride with the changes made years ago to the copyright laws of our major trading partners including Australia, the US and Europe,” he says.

Sumpter says that the new law favours users over right-owners with Government officials apparently concerned about “digital lock up”, the idea that big companies might use technical protection measures (or “TPMs”) to stop people making “fair use” of copyright works, as they are entitled to do in certain discrete circumstances for private study, education and the like.

Controversy surrounds TPMs. Copyright owners say that the law needs to protect digital access controls which stop users from copying or on-selling, for example, music or software once they have bought it. Owners say that access control technology should be protected to encourage innovative digital distribution models. Officials were not keen on that idea as they believe it would have undermined New Zealand’s approach to parallel importation: genuine parallel imported products are legal here, whereas in most western countries they are not.

“The thinking is that if you protect access controls, you make it illegal for people to watch their Zone 1 DVDs or the like in New Zealand”, notes Sumpter. There were, though, ways of addressing Government’s digital lock up concerns, but they were ignored. “In the end” says Sumpter “a balance has to be struck. For now New Zealand has chosen to favour end-users over owners. While that’s a policy decision, New Zealand business needs the support of strong IP law. We have not heard the end of the copyright debate”.


Related people	Matt Sumpter
Related practice areas	Intellectual property

Chapman Tripp welcomes new Senior Solicitors

Nicki Carter, Senior Solicitor, Corporate & commercial
Chapman Tripp welcomes back Nicki who has returned to the firm’s Christchurch office as a senior solicitor. Nicki has spent the last five years in London where she worked as in-house legal counsel for multinational telecommunications operator, T-Mobile, and as a solicitor at UK law firm, Bevan Brittan, where she focused on large scale property projects. Nicki advises clients on general corporate, commercial and commercial property law.

Karen Riddle, Senior Solicitor, Finance
Chapman Tripp is pleased to welcome Karen Riddle back to New Zealand and to its finance group in Auckland as a senior solicitor. Karen left Chapman Tripp in 2006 to gain overseas experience. She has spent the last two years working in the leveraged finance team of Ashurst LLP in London. Karen’s new role will see her advising clients on acquisition finance and general corporate finance.

Todd Spencer, Senior Solicitor, Corporate & commercial
Todd joins the Chapman Tripp’s Wellington office as a senior solicitor in the corporate and commercial group. Todd specialises in advising energy and infrastructure clients. He joins the firm from Contact Energy where he was involved in advising on wind, geothermal and gas-fired power station developments, Previously Todd worked for Herbert Smith in London and Asia, where he worked on energy and infrastructure deals.

Josine Wynberg, Senior Solicitor, Dispute resolution
Josine joins the firm’s Wellington office as a senior legal advisor in the dispute resolution team. Josine specialises in commercial litigation and insurance law. She has recently moved to New Zealand from Darwin, where she worked at Cridlands Lawyers, advising on construction industry and insurance-related disputes, and advising insurers and employers on their obligations under the Work Health Act.


Related people	Nicki Carter, Karen Riddle, Todd Spencer, Jo Wynberg

Chapman Tripp works with Ministry of Economic Development on petroleum reserves project

Senior solicitor Chris Dann, solicitor Ruth Loan and partner Brigid McArthur are advising the Ministry of Economic Development on its project to fulfil New Zealand’s international treaty obligations, as a member of the International Energy Agency (IEA), by contracting with various international oil companies to hold petroleum reserves on behalf of the Crown and provide the Crown with an option to purchase petroleum in the event of an oil supply emergency. The firm’s role has included designing the global RFP and tendering process, analysing RFPs and tenders through two tender rounds and negotiating and drawing up commercial contracts with tenderers based in Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Japan. It has also advised the Ministry on the process (and documentation) for the purchase and on-sale of petroleum stocks.

As a member of the IEA, New Zealand is required to hold at least 90 days of oil reserves (measured as net imports). New Zealand’s stock levels have recently been as low as 60 days of net oil imports as a result of increasing demand and declining domestic production. The success of this project has enabled New Zealand to maintain its membership of the IEA, meet the 90 days reserve obligation and enhance security of supply of oil in the event of a global supply emergency.


Related people	Brigid McArthur, Chris Dann

New Investment Advisor and Broker Disclosure Rules

The new mandatory investment adviser and broker disclosure regime comes into force on 29 February 2008.

Chapman Tripp partner, Tim Williams says that under the new regime, advisers and brokers must give a “disclosure statement” to each client who is a member of the public – usually before they provide investment advice or accept money or property from the client. This is a significant change from the current two stage (initial and on request) disclosure regime and will affect advisers’ and brokers’ everyday operations.

Tim Williams says the changes are a desirable and timely addition to New Zealand’s investor protection laws. "However, as is common, the devil is in the detail. Some of the required disclosures are cast too widely. For example, an advisor needs to disclose any financial or other relationship with anyone connected with a recommended investment. This is very broad. For some reason, the general requirement that the relationship be one that is likely to influence the advice has been omitted in this case. Judgement is therefore called for when preparing these disclosures."

Mr Williams says another illustration of where the balance is skewed is on an interpretation favoured by the Securities Commission, where advisors need to disclose only when they have qualifications, PI insurance or dispute resolution facilities. "Surely it is more important to be told when the advisor is unqualified, uninsured and has no dispute resolution facilities than when they qualified, insured and deal with disputes appropriately."

He suggests that some of the required disclosures are also likely to be impracticably long to read over the phone when giving telephone advice not covered by a prior written disclosure. "It may have been better to require reference to a website or allow the investor to waive reading of the entire disclosure statement in these cases.”

“It is important to bear in mind however, that these are points of detail. There is a defence where breaches are immaterial and exemptions can be obtained for technical or unjustified difficulties. Overall the legislation obtains a pass mark”.

Please follow this link for Chapman Tripp's newsletter summarising the key points of the new disclosure regime.


Related people	Tim Williams
Related published articles	New investment adviser and broker disclosure rules

Chapman Tripp works with BDO Spicers, the Voluntary Administrators of Icon Digital

Partners Michael Arthur and Michael Harper of Chapman Tripp’s Restructuring and Insolvency Group acted for BDO Spicers, the voluntary administrators of Icon Digital Entertainment Ltd. Icon ran the high-profile music chain Sounds, a group of Blockbuster stores and the Games Plus stores. It owed creditors almost NZ$20m.
This was the first voluntary administration in New Zealand since the introduction of the new law on 1 November 2007.

Michael Harper said that initially opting for voluntary administration rather than receivership or liquidation allowed Icon Digital protection from its creditors while the administrators were able to explore a going concern sale and trade through the busy Christmas period. Ultimately it was not possible and the company was placed into liquidation.

For the first time in New Zealand, a company has been able to take advantage of unique statutory protection in order to explore a potential restructuring. While it was not possible in this case, voluntary administration provides troubled companies with a new avenue within which to restructure or recapitalise their business.
Although ultimately the VA did not result in a restructuring of Icon, the administration did lead to going concern sales of some assets.

The Icon administration required the team to apply twice for court approval of certain processes, to resolve claims by secured creditors and assist the administrators with the many and various new procedures introduced by the VA regime.


Related people	Michael Arthur, Michael Harper
Related practice areas	Restructuring and insolvency

New talent arrives at Chapman Tripp's Wellington office

Anna Moodie, Senior Solicitor – Corporate & Commercial

Chapman Tripp is pleased to welcome Anna Moodie who joins the corporate & commercial group as a senior solicitor specialising in competition, regulatory and commercial law.

Anna brings over six years’ experience from both private practice and in-house counsel roles and has advised on a range of issues, including pricing, trade practices, acquisitions, and compliance, particularly across the telecommunications and energy industries. Most recently Anna worked at Telecom as a senior counsel in the competition and regulatory legal team.

Partner Neil Anderson says that in her time at Telecom, Anna was constantly engaged in the most demanding and challenging of competition law and regulatory matters.

“We are delighted to have her on board and fully expect that our clients will find her expertise extremely valuable,” he says.


Related people	Neil Anderson, Anna Moodie
Related practice areas	Company and commercial law