For those of you out there with aspirations of raising capital in Australia, here is a timely reminder of the restrictions imposed by the Corporations Act relating to the promotion of security offers (ASIC Media Release 15-025).

The Corporations Act states that it is an offence to:

• advertise security offers; or
• publish statements referring to security offers (or that may induce people to apply for securities),

before the relevant disclosure document (e.g. a prospectus) has been lodged with ASIC.  There are also rules that apply after the lodgement of the relevant disclosure document… but the rules that apply before lodgement are far more restrictive.

ASIC has reported that Bitcoin Group (a Melbourne based Bitcoin miner) recently used the social media application “Wechat” to seek expressions of interest from potential investors in relation to its proposed IPO on the ASX.  ASIC has issued a stop order preventing Bitcoin Group from publishing any statements about its IPO until it lodges a disclosure document with ASIC.

Sierra Legal advised JAG Capital in its acquisition of the All Heads Services business, a long-standing and successful cylinder head reconditioning business located in Victoria, Australia.

Sierra Legal successfully negotiated relief from ASIC from the managed investment scheme licensing and registration requirements to allow Avia Aircraft to establish an aircraft time sharing scheme in Australia.

Sierra Legal advised Ebony Iron and its shareholders on the sale of all the issued shares in Ebony Iron to Strategic Minerals Plc, a company listed on AIM in the UK.

Sierra Legal is pleased to announce that Michael Jeffery has been promoted to the position of Senior Associate.

Jenny Lau, an adviser with extensive experience in mergers and acquisitions, divestments, private equity investments and general commercial and corporate advice, joined Sierra Legal’s team of senior advisers.

Sierra Legal recently advised Ebony Iron on 2 private capital raisings to fund acquisitions and project development and expansion, and also acted for the company in its successful acquisition of Southern Minerals Group, a company with iron ore interests in New Mexico, USA

Sierra Legal has successfully advised a leading Australian packaging group on various acquisitions by the company, together with a range of supply agreements with key customers.

Sierra Legal advised CM Basin Coal on the establishment of a strategic joint venture between the company and Hudson Resources Ltd, in relation to thermal coal opportunities in the Clarence-Moreton Basin in Queensland, Australia.

Craig Sanford was appointed as a non-executive director of ComGroup Australia and Sierra Legal was appointed to provide general corporate and commercial legal services to the company.

Mike Jeffery, a highly experienced corporate and legal adviser, joined Sierra Legal earlier this year, adding significant experience and expertise to the practice.

Sierra Legal advised Fertoz on its establishment in Australia, and also advised the company on the acquisition of various fertiliser related exploration assets in the Northern Territory.

As many of you already know, at Sierra Legal, we have a small team of lawyers split between Melbourne, Brisbane and the Gold Coast. Staff sometimes choose to work from our CBD offices, but most staff predominantly work from home offices.

As more and more businesses face the prospect of temporarily closing their offices over the coming weeks and months (with their employees working remotely), I wanted to share some practical tips regarding the 3 most important (and easy to implement) IT systems that we use here at Sierra Legal to allow our staff to work remotely.

1. Zoom
2. Zoom is probably the single most important system that helps us to maintain our close-knit team. Every morning starts with a team video call (often with staff located in 6 different locations) and Zoom is then used consistently through-out the day for staff to communicate with each other. Home internet speeds and line quality can differ for different members of the team, but Zoom seems to handle this much better than many of the alternatives. Links for Zoom meetings are also really easy to share with clients – and we expect to be hosting many more of our client meetings on Zoom during the foreseeable future.
3. Microsoft Office 365
4. Office 365 takes care of our email hosting (Exchange Online) and document storage (SharePoint Online). Historically, SharePoint Online had a number of data and file number limits - meaning it was not suitable for many businesses. However, most of these limitations have been removed and SharePoint Online is now a really easy and affordable option for small and medium sized businesses that need a secure online document storage solution.
5. Repstor
6. Repstor is an easy to use plug-in for Outlook. Repstor creates folders (that look and feel like standard Outlook folders) that can be mapped to (and synced with) a range of different cloud storage providers (including SharePoint, OneDrive, Dropbox and Box). Rather than staff keeping emails stored in their own inboxes (or folders within their inboxes), all project emails are stored in central repositories in SharePoint Online that the whole team has access to. If a team member is sick or on holiday (or there are multiple people working on the same project from different locations), Repstor is a really easy way to ensure that important emails can be accessed by the whole team.

If you are looking at setting up remote working systems in a hurry and would like to bounce ideas off someone, please feel free to get in touch.

It’s otherwise business as usual at Sierra Legal and the team is available by phone, email and Zoom to handle any corporate or commercial legal matters

You can even use this link to book a call or a Zoom meeting!

Mike Jeffery

Director