Costas Condoleon

Partner
Sydney

Biography

Costas is a partner in our Corporate Advisory group and a Board member.

Costas is widely recognised as one of Australia's leading strategic M&A and securities lawyers and has advised on some of Australia’s most prominent, novel and complex deals. He is one of only a small group of lawyers ranked Band 1 in M&A by Chambers in Australia.

Costas frequently acts for both bidders and targets in takeovers (friendly and unsolicited) and other control transactions, and his significant experience also extends to private M&A, corporate and securities law, capital markets and directors’ duties.

Costas is a member of the Australian Government's Takeovers Panel, Australia’s primary forum for resolving takeover disputes, an adjunct member of the Faculty of Law at the University of Sydney where he lectures on Schemes of Arrangements and the Takeovers Panel in the Masters of Laws course of Takeovers and Reconstructions and is a member of the Corporations Committee of the Law Council of Australia.

Experience

Costas’ experience includes advising:

  • Sigma Healthcare on its $32 billion reverse takeover and ASX listing of Chemist Warehouse.

  • SG Fleet on its proposed $1.4 billion public to private by Pacific Equity Partners by scheme of arrangement.

  • Vocus on its proposed $5.25 billion acquisition of TPG Telecom’s Enterprise, Government and Wholesale fixed business and fibre network assets.

  • QANTM Intellectual Property Limited on its $260 million take private by funds managed and advised by Adamantem Capital by scheme of arrangement.

  • Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking on its $1.2 billion acquisition of Link Group by scheme of arrangement.

  • Orica on its fully underwritten $400 million placement and share purchase plan.

  • Fresenius on its sale of the Cura Day Hospitals business.

  • APA Group on its $773 million acquisition of the Basslink interconnector pipeline, by acquiring the Basslink group’s secured bank debt and subsequently the Basslink group from the appointed administrators and receivers.

  • Macquarie Asset Management and its co-investors on the $3.58 billion sale of Axicom.

  • Cromwell Property Group on its proposed $1.1 billion merger of Cromwell Direct Property Fund with Australian Unity Diversified Property Fund and acquisition of associated management rights.

  • CIMIC on its response to HOCHTIEF Australia’s unsolicited takeover bid valuing CIMIC at $6.85 billion.

  • Virtus Health on its response to the extensive and hard fought contest for control labelled “the M&A battle of the year” by the Australian Financial Review involving a proposed scheme of arrangement and simultaneous takeover bid by CapVest, and unsolicited but ultimately recommended takeover bid by BGH Capital, and associated Takeovers Panel proceedings.

  • Yancoal Australia on its response to the unsolicited take private proposal from Yankuang Energy valuing Yancoal at $7 billion.

  • Anchorage Capital Group on Allegro’s takeover of Slater & Gordon.

  • MoneyMe on its $460 million scrip based merger with SocietyOne.

  • Orcon on its $1.7 billion merger with 2degrees to create the third largest telco in New Zealand.

  • SiteMinder Limited on its IPO and ASX listing, and pre-IPO capital rounds and sell downs.

  • Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets (MIRA) on its $2.4 billion acquisition of Bingo Industries Limited by scheme of arrangement.

  • MIRA and Aware Super on their $3.5 billion acquisition of Vocus Group Limited by scheme of arrangement.

Awards and Recognition

  • Chambers Asia-Pacific 2025

    Band 1 for Corporate/M&A

  • The Legal 500 Asia-Pacific 2025

    Recognised as a Leading Partner in Corporate and M&A

  • Chambers Global 2025

    Ranked Band 1 for Corporate/M&A

  • The Best Lawyers in Australia 2025

    Recognised in the areas of Commercial Law, Corporate/Governance Practice, Corporate Law, Equity Capital Markets Law, Mergers and Acquisitions Law, Private Equity Law, Telecommunications Law

  • IFLR1000 2024

    Highly Regarded for Equity Capital Markets

Testimonials

Client first thinking

A truly exceptional corporate lawyer who ensures that his clients strategically important and high-value transactions are in the right hands.

Chambers Asia-Pacific 2024

An excellent practitioner and a good person who possesses incredible experience, sound judgement, responsiveness, commercial awareness, and ability to communicate and explain complex issues to the board and management.

Chambers Asia-Pacific 2024

Extremely good to deal with. Always has sound responses, is pragmatic, low on ego, commercial and easy to talk with.

The Legal 500 Asia-Pacific 2024

Chambers Global says peers note the strong technical skills of Costas who is a 'responsive and skilled M&A practitioner with strong technical skills and excellent commercial judgement', and that Costas has 'an amazing legal mind, providing an outstanding mix of technical skill and commercial judgement'.

Chambers Global

He is an exceptional operator. He is brilliant at distilling and explaining complex legal scenarios for board members and executives. He is highly commercial, pragmatic and possesses deep technical skills.

IFLR1000
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