Corporate and Commercial

With our combination of international reach, ability to draw upon multi-disciplinary expertise and industry sector focus, we can advise you on all aspects of inbound investment, whether through private equity, venture capital, angel investors or corporates. We apply a sector focused approach on deals, and by combining our industry expertise with our transactional capabilities we understand the issues and challenges facing our clients’ businesses.

Joint ventures can take many forms, including companies, partnerships, limited partnerships, contractual co-operation and alliance arrangements. Getting the building blocks of any joint venture right, and future-proofing it, are fundamental to any joint venture’s success. We bring together the right experts from the PwC network (whether from legal, tax and accounting or corporate finance backgrounds) to address all the issues and provide you with complete commercial solutions.

Whether you are looking to start a company, buy a business, innovate, or increase marketing spend, growth businesses won’t be able to realise their potential without funding. There are many ways to raise capital, and it’s important to understand the advantages and disadvantages of different types of fundraising and to make sure you get the right advice and use the right documents when raising capital.

Our lawyers regularly act on behalf of overseas investors looking to purchase or invest in New Zealand assets. Our application success rate demonstrates our knowledge of the Overseas Investment regime, and our ability to understand both your specific needs and the needs of the Overseas Investment Office. 

Working closely with PwC’s finance, economics and deals teams, we have the ability to help you appropriately demonstrate to the Overseas Investment Office the economic benefits to New Zealand brought by your investment.

Our commercial law specialists will work with you to understand your objectives, deliver advice in real terms and deliver commercially aware solutions. We can help you with negotiation and drafting:

• a full range of commercial contracts
• intellectual property  arrangements (transfers and licensing)
• distribution arrangements
• service agreements
• customer and supplier arrangements
• transfer pricing implementation agreements
• terms of trade

Risk and legal entity management is gaining increasing prominence.  Together with changes to technology and workforce participants, board / management responsibilities have never been more important. A constantly shifting regime of regulatory developments, business customs and compliance requirements means you must be vigilant in managing your legal entity structures, and boards must be active in their duties. We can assist you with:

• governance protocols
• board governance
• board responsibility / director duties
• regulatory governance

You may want to reorganise your business to reduce administrative costs, maximise investment in new markets, rationalise your supply chain or otherwise take advantage of efficiencies that are available to you. Whatever your aims, we have the right people to help you succeed. Our team can provide tailored support for a variety of projects, including:

• advice in relation to structuring options
• post deal integration
• reorganisations
• intra group financing
• structure and business rationalisation
• alignment of legal structure to business divisions

We’re uniquely placed to navigate you through the complexities of your local or global reorganisation. We’ll help you structure the corporate and financial aspects of your business, advising you on critical issues whether they are employment, banking or IP related and wherever in the world you are operating.

Through our global footprint, we can offer you coverage that cannot be matched by any other provider in New Zealand.

Employee share schemes often form a part of an employer’s remuneration approach. By creating the right reward plan for your employees you can deliver sustainable value to your shareholders and incentivise outstanding executive performance.

This can be a complex area and developing the right plan that delivers the right incentives from a tax, legal and operational perspective, is critical to ensuring that it functions as intended. We work closely with PwC’s executive rewards, corporate finance and HR experts to advise on and draft equity and incentive schemes (including share schemes, phantom share schemes, options, equity and bonus schemes). 

In order to operate a business in New Zealand through a company or branch, a business is required to register with New Zealand Companies Office, and in most instances, prepare financial statements. With our industry-based experience and, working together with your PwC tax team, we are best positioned to advise, assist, and undertake company secretarial services for you, including:

• providing advice in relation to company secretarial and financial reporting obligations
• obtaining tax registrations
• applying for company name approval
• incorporating new companies on the New Zealand and registering companies on the overseas register 
• maintaining and updating company records and registers for directors and shareholders
• acting as registered office and address for service
• preparing and lodging annual returns
• lodging financial statements
• amalgamating companies
• removing companies from the Companies Register that have ceased trading
• restoring companies to the Companies register

We value getting to know your business and delivering business-focused legal solutions. Our innovative outsourced legal counsel service gives you the advantages of having experienced in-house and private practice legal counsel on an affordable outsourced basis. [Many of our lawyers have worked in-house and understand the dynamics and function of an in-house role.] We use a business-centric, practical approach to address legal needs and can flex the support you need, when you need it, with no extra headcount.