Rob McKenzie

Expertise

Rob has over 40 years’ experience in corporate, commercial, finance, reconstruction and insolvency law and in particular, business commercialization, structuring, governance, risk management, meeting procedure and dispute resolution. He works collaboratively with businesses to assist them with substantial transformational events.

For 22 years he was a partner of top tier national law firm Clayton Utz culminating in a role as national head of reconstruction and insolvency. Later, Rob was a partner of Jackson McDonald for six years, including four years on the board.

Rob has had a long involvement with the Law Council of Australia having chaired its Western Australian Corporations Law Sub-Committee and its national Reconstruction and Insolvency Committee. He has also chaired the Law Society of Western Australia Commercial Law Committee, taught for a decade at the University of Western Australia and delivered numerous papers, locally, nationally and internationally.

Rob has acted for all four of the major Australian banks and for many years was WA law firm partner responsible for their business relationships and those of many other banks.

Rob is a corporate troubleshooter who has worked with clients to solve a number of complex problems over many years. Some examples are:

• representing a major hospital group on its successful early Public Private Partnership with the WA Government for construction of a major hospital;
• representing parties in a number of successful Takeovers Panel applications from its inception year;
• involvement in a number of significant listed company reconstructions such as Anaconda, Kingstream, Brandrill and Sons of Gwalia;
• involved in pioneering the use of structures such as creditors’ and members’ schemes of arrangement, voluntary administrations, deeds of company arrangement, creditors’ trusts, backdoor listings and reverse takeovers.

Rob was appointed by the Australian Federal Government to the Committees reviewing funding to Non-government Schools, Insolvency Practitioners and Controllers and the Round Table on Managed Investment Schemes.

He has extensive experience in a wide range of industries such as financial services, health, science, technology, education, professional services, mining, mining services, retail and agriculture.