Baker McKenzie delivers tailored expertise in Australia’s corporate and M&A market, and it is praised as a team that is ‘very accommodating in the way they do deals’ and strives for client-driven results beyond transactional relationships. The team excels in high-value public and private transactions across the energy, healthcare, and digital infrastructure sectors, guiding listed companies, private equity funds, and global investors through complex cross-border deals. Co-head Lance Sacks drives public and private M&A with strategic precision, while co-head Simon De Young leads private equity buyouts and exits, focusing on financial sponsors. Richard Lustig focuses on international transactions, including public mergers and acquisitions, takeovers, and schemes of arrangement. Aylin Cunsolo and Andrea Kennedy departed in June and February 2025 respectively.
Legal 500 Editorial commentary
Accolades
Client satisfaction: NPS ®
Testimonials
Collated independently by Legal 500 research team.
- 'Experience consistent across several large, multi-jurisdictional transactions. Very client and solution focused, with excellent strategic advice and technical expertise across multiple jurisdictions. Very responsive partners and teams who were a pleasure to work with, including under extreme pressure.'
- 'We were able to tap into expertise within multiple jurisdictions and rely on our relationship partners to ensure the advice and service from other offices was of a high standard. We had the benefit of high quality partners but also outstanding associates who were incredibly dedicated and impressive.'
‘Our BM partner is very accommodating in the way they do deals which is not the standard process a corporate goes through.'
'They try to work with us to get the result we want.’
‘The BM team are friendly and they try hard to work with us and just not based on a transactional legal relationship.’
'Invariably available, well priced.'
'The entire team responded to extremely tight deadlines and managed the team and resource needs accordingly. They represented us professionally and well in dealings with counterparties consistent with the values of our organisation.'
'Responsiveness, quality of advice, commercial and strategic perspective, ability to gather high functioning teams to resource matters.'
Work highlights
Advised a consortium formed by MAM and PSP on the sale of its interests totalling 88% of AirTrunk with an implied enterprise value of over AUD24b, making it the second largest transaction involving the sale of a private company in history and the biggest data centre deal globally completed to date.
Advised longstanding client Orora on the sale of its North American packaging solutions business, Orora Packaging Solutions, OPS to Veritiv Corporation, a portfolio company of US private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier LLC, for an enterprise value of AUD1.775bn.
Assisted HMC Capital with agreeing terms to acquire 100% of Global Switch for upfront consideration of AUD1.937bn, and also assisted HMC Capital with its negotiations to acquire additional data centre assets for its Global Digital Infrastructure Platform and its strategic AUD400m acquisition of iseek, a leading data centre and cloud services provider.
Lawyers
Leading partners
The strongest partners in their field, leading on market-leading deals and endorsed by peers and clients alike.
Practice head
Lance Sacks; Simon De Young
Other key lawyers
Richard Lustig