Patrick is widely recognised as one of Australia's leading technology lawyers, with a broad practice spanning transactional and advisory work involving data, technology and IP.
Patrick is also one of Australia's leading privacy/data protection lawyers. He has been expanding the firm's data governance practice. He has particular regulatory expertise in the gaming sector.
Quotes about Patrick: "very clever across all tech developments, quite often ahead of the game in terms of his expertise and possessing a practical knack for finding an acceptable solution." "He is an expert in privacy and data laws for IT matters that involve significant sensitive data."
Patrick's work highlights include
- Outsourcings: advised Australian banking industry on establishment of the New Payments Platform, including long term contract with SWIFT to design, build and operate basic infrastructure to deliver near real time clearing and settlement of A$ transactions; advised an insurer on its entry into the NSW compulsory third-party motor insurance market, including claims management outsourcing; advised food manufacturer on the appointment of an Indian service provider as its managed IT services provider to manage key IT systems; advised a mining company on outsourcing of its procurement function; advised a listed Australian property fund outsourcing certain finance and admin, HR and IT functions to an Indian provider, acting for a foreign bank providing a trade finance platform to a leading Australian domestic bank
- Core system replacements : Patrick has acted in many such transactions, often involving mission critical systems or services. In recent years many of Patrick's clients have replaced on-premises systems with cloud services, and Patrick's role has included advice on regulatory issues arising from such projects, in addition to involvement in the transaction process. Examples include advising a listed Australian non-bank lender on projects to replace loan origination and core banking platforms, and advising a number of insurers on projects to replace systems of record
- Data/privacy advice : Patrick conducts privacy impact assessments on high privacy risk projects, and advises on regulatory investigations and remediation programs relevant to the use of personal data. He advises on data security incidents, and has successfully obtained urgent court orders to have leaked customer data taken down from the internet. Patrick's clients in this space include government agencies, financial institutions and retailers operating large scale loyalty programs.
- Specialist role on M&A transactions : Patrick has been an important member of the KWM team advising on many M&A transactions as a specialist advising on IT, data and IP issues. Examples include Temenos' acquisitions of Rubik and Avoka; AMP's sale of AMP Life, amaysim's sales of its energy and mobiles businesses; Westfield's demerger to create Scentre Group; and Brookfield's acquisition of Healthscope.
- Gaming sector transactions : Patrick has deep regulatory expertise relevant to transactions in the Australian gaming sector (details available on request) .
