Casey is a partner in our tax team focusing on corporate transactions, managed funds and structured finance transactions.
He has extensive experience in domestic and trans-Tasman private equity transactions and has provided structured finance advice to most of the banks operating in New Zealand. Casey advises the New Zealand Government on tax matters and has assisted US investors such as Edison Mission, Brunswick Corporation, Heinz and many US and Australian private equity funds with structuring New Zealand direct investments.
Casey is a member of the International Fiscal Association and a frequent presenter at Law Society and other seminars on taxation. He is the co-convenor of the New Zealand Law Society Tax Committee, and a member of the Government’s Rewrite Advisory Panel. He is also the only practising lawyer to be appointed to the Tax Working Group, a group established to assist the Government in considering the key tax policy challenges facing New Zealand.
Casey lectures in taxation at the University of Auckland and University of Sydney and is a co-author of Income Tax in New Zealand (Brookers, 2004).
He is regularly listed as a leading lawyer in Chambers Global, Legal Media Group Guide to the World’s Leading Tax Lawyers, PLC Which Lawyer? and Asia Pacific Legal 500.
Recent experience
Casey has advised:
- leading outdoor equipment and clothing retailer Kathmandu Holdings Limited on the New Zealand law aspects of its 2009 IPO of shares, the largest IPO in New Zealand since 2005
- Telecom on the New Zealand tax consequences of its NZ$1b return of capital by way of share cancellation
- Bank of New Zealand on the raising of Tier One capital from the New Zealand public using fixed rate redeemable shares issued by a portfolio investment entity
- Hauraki and Trans-Tasman Private Equity funds, managed by Goldman Sachs JBWere, on transactions including the privatisation of Kathmandu, the Australian IPO of Norfolk Group, and the subscription for shares issued by AJ Lucas Group in Australia
- both New Zealand and foreign-based clients on the application of the new foreign investment fund tax rules
- on designing bank-sponsored funds using the portfolio investment entity legislation, and
- the taxation of complex financial instruments for both institutional and retail investors, including obtaining IRD rulings.