Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) acted for Netwealth Group on its successful $879m IPO.
The IPO included a tailored “platform offer,” allowing the company to sell the offer directly to financial planners and their clients who use the Netwealth platform. HSF, which is
opening a second office in Sydney, sought first-of-its kind releases from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to make this happen.
Netwealth started trading earlier this month under the “NWL” ticker in this year’s second-largest IPO. Shares of the company – which had $15.7bn under management and administration at the end of September – jumped 44% on its first day of trading.
Michael Ziegelaar and senior associate Alex Mackinnon led the HSF team. Ziegelaar jointly leads the firm’s equity capital markets group in Australia from Melbourne. The HSF team on the deal included solicitors Amanda Cowan and Elizabeth Goodman.
Their work earned praise from Netwealth.
“HSF were exceptional to work with. While our IPO was complex, HSF’s expertise and commerciality resulted in a really smooth IPO process,” said Michael Heine, Netwealth Group joint managing director. “They obtained some novel ASIC relief for us, which meant we could implement a bespoke offer structure. I found the HSF team highly approachable, responsive and a pleasure to work with.”
Ziegelaar said the successful IPO “really showed that there is strong appetite for the market to invest in good businesses with attractive fundamentals, run by experienced boards and senior management.”
Credit Suisse and UBS acted as joint lead managers.
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