Meet our People

Franki has an established presence on the east coast, working across both our Brisbane and Sydney offices.

Franki is an M&A and corporate law specialist with over 25 years’ experience, including over 15 years as an M&A/corporate partner at top tier Australian law firms.

She advises foreign and domestic clients in a range of sectors, including infrastructure, private capital, energy/ renewables, transport, agribusiness and government.

Her private sector experience includes acting on private and public M&A transactions, corporate restructures, capital raisings and joint ventures.

In the public sector Franki has acted for state governments and government entities on complex transactions, including critical infrastructure asset restructures and privatisations.

Franki also regularly advises her clients on governance, risk and compliance issues, including compliance with ASX listing rules, Corporations Act, Australia’s foreign investment laws, and ESG related issues.

Franki’s clients include ASX listed companies, private capital investors, large private corporates and government.

Franki’s experience includes advising:

• Paine Schwartz Partners – in consortium with Driscolls and British Columbia Investment, on their $1.5 billion acquisition of Costa Group (ASX:CGC) by way of scheme of arrangement.
• Australian Agricultural Company (ASX:AAC) – on several strategic acquisitions, divestments, joint ventures and other major commercial transactions.
• Ferrovial and ACCIONA – on their acquisition of the operations and maintenance contract and associated agreements for the Toowoomba Second Range Crossing PPP.
• AVADA Group (ASX:AVD) – on a number of bolt-on acquisitions and related capital raisings.
• QIC – as the manager of the Queensland Future Fund, on the establishment of the Future Fund and the transfer of assets valued at $7.7 billion to the Fund by the Queensland Government, including the transfer (among other assets) of the Queensland land titles registry business.
• I Squared Capital – on the establishment of its Australian presence and multiple investments in Australia through its Global Infrastructure Funds II and III, in the energy, renewables and waste recycling sectors.
• Citigroup and Morgan Stanley – as underwriters, on the Australian aspects of the proposed IPO on NASDAQ of American Depositary Shares in Kilcoy Global Foods.
• Infrastructure Capital Group – on its JV with Veolia in relation to the financing, design, construction, operation and maintenance of the Springvale Water Treatment Project in NSW.
• An underbidder – in the competitive sale process for each of Origin Energy’s and ActewAGL’s smart metering business.
• GoldlinQ Holdings – as project vehicle for the Gold Coast Light Rail PPP, on the equity documents for stage 3 of that project.
• GS Engineering and Construction – as a member of the successful Spark Consortium appointed by the Victorian Government to deliver the North East Link PPP, on its equity participation in that project.
• Nutrien (TSX:NTR) – on its acquisition of RuralCo (ASX:RHL) by way of scheme of arrangement.
• National Veterinary Care (ASX:NVL) – on its acquisition by US based Vet Partners by way of scheme of arrangement.
• Lactalis (formerly Parmalat) – on several strategic acquisitions in the dairy sector, including its acquisition of the WA and NSW based dairy and fresh fruit business of Harvey Fresh.
• Queensland Rail – on renewal of its funding agreement with the State of Queensland for the supply of passenger rail services.
• Energy Queensland – on its minority investment in an early stage smart energy solutions business.
• Queensland Government – on the $2.3billion privatisation of Port of Brisbane and the potential privatisation of Queensland’s electricity transmission and distribution network businesses, Powerlink, Energex and Ergon Energy;
• Northern Territory Government – on the $506million privatisation of Port of Darwin.
• Energex – on the restructure of the Queensland state-owned energy distributors to form Energy Queensland.