Alex is one of Australia’s leading complex commercial litigation and regulatory inquiry partners. Having acted on a variety of high profile matters in recent years, he regularly provides strategic advice to executive management and boards of listed companies and major financial intermediaries on significant corporate and commercial litigation, regulatory inquiries and parliamentary hearings, with a particular focus on financial services, governance issues and white-collar misconduct.
Landmark Court outcomes include the first successful court challenge in 20 years against findings by ICAC of corrupt conduct, successfully defending shareholder oppression proceedings brought against Brickworks and successfully bringing proceedings to have class action litigation funding arrangements declared as unlawful managed investment scheme. His status among certain clients as a “go-to partner for big-ticket, reputationally significant litigation”(Chamber & Partners, 2021) is demonstrated through his work for Woolworths in successfully staying Federal Court proceedings, and resolving arbitral proceedings following the termination of the Masters JV and Fairfax Media in contested court aspects of the merger by scheme of arrangement with Nine Entertainment Co.
Market leading class action work includes defending three of Australia’s largest insurers in separate class actions concerning motor vehicle add-on insurance, NAB in its consumer credit insurance class action and Woolworths in a shareholder class action. His work representing clients in regulatory investigations and proceedings includes acting for NAB in ASIC penalty proceedings alleging manipulation of the BBSW benchmark rate, advising UBS and UBS Securities Australia in ASIC investigations and Parliamentary hearings into the changes to a research report during the 2015 NSW Election Campaign and representing Suncorp in the Financial Services Royal Commission.
