TMA People
The TMA Australia Board consist of highly regarded professionals who are deeply connected to the turnaround industry and dedicate a significant amount of their own time to the TMA and the overall betterment of the turnaround and corporate renewal in Australia.
Chair
Zina Edwards
Hamilton Locke
Zina is a founding partner of law firm Hamilton Locke. She is a finance and restructuring lawyer focused on the non-bank lender market. She advises numerous funds, asset managers and other non-bank participants in relation to investments in complex structured finance and hybrid transactions, secondary trades, restructuring and special situations. Zina has also worked on a large number of distressed and performing portfolio sale transactions in Australia and across Asia acting for both purchasers and sellers.
President
Jason Preston
McGrathNicol
Jason is the Chairman of McGrathNicol and has more than 20 years of restructuring and insolvency experience. As a highly regarded specialist, he helps businesses facing operational and financial distress. Jason has advised on many of the landmark restructuring matters in the Australian market. He also works with company boards and management to provide strategic and innovative solutions to challenging situations. Examples of high profile assignments include buy side financial advice to Cyrus Capital on Virgin Australia, advising Babcock & Brown on a financial restructure and asset divestment process, acting as the administrator of Toys R Us and as the receiver of Quintis Ltd.
Vice President
Gayle Dickerson
KPMG
Gayle is a partner in Deals Advisory at KPMG, focused on turnaround, restructuring and insolvency, with over 15 years of experience, in both the UK and Australia. She is a registered insolvency practitioner and NSW Committee member of the Turnaround Management Association. She has acted in a range of corporate insolvency, restructuring and advisory matters and acts for a range of stakeholders including corporates, Government, lenders, employees and shareholders.
Director
Paul Apathy
Herbert Smith Freehills
Paul is a highly experienced practitioner specialising in restructuring, insolvency and special situations. He is also the global co-chair of the firm’s Restructuring, Turnaround and Insolvency practice.
He has extensive regional, international and cross-border experience advising creditors, companies, private equity and hedge funds in respect of restructurings and distressed situations. His clients include corporates such as Speedcast, Arq Group, Retail Food Group, Imdex and Arrium; banks such as National Australia Bank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Deutsche Bank, Macquarie Bank, Nomura and Standard Chartered Bank; and funds such as Carlyle, KKR, Värde, HPS, Blackstone and OCP, along with other leading corporations, banks, funds and insolvency firms.
Director
Samantha Findley
Gordon Brothers
Samantha Findley is Managing Director, Capital at Gordon Brothers. Samantha oversees lending and investment opportunities across all industries in Australia and New Zealand and leads a team responsible for transactions throughout the structuring, execution and portfolio life cycle. She works closely with clients to monetize assets through recourse and non-recourse financing structures.
Director
Scott Guthrie
Thomson Geer
Scott Guthrie draws on his more than 25 years’ of expertise to advise clients in the finance, insolvency and property industries. A significant part of Scott’s practice involves acting for various stakeholders in the unsecured and secured insolvency market. Scott regularly advises and acts for receivers, liquidators, administrators and bankruptcy trustees in identifying, preserving and recovering assets for secured and unsecured creditors. Scott also represents directors and company officers, particularly in response to investigations and enforcement action by ASIC and other corporate regulators.
Director
Sebastian Hams
KordaMentha
Sebastian brings a committed and focussed approach to deliver end-to-end solutions for clients that exceed expectations.
His empathetic, collaborative approach coupled with 20 years’ experience in large scale restructuring and commerce, both within Australia, Asia and in the UK, is highly valued by his many long-term clients.
Sebastian is the firm’s aviation leader, and also has significant experience in agriculture, health and construction, and with businesses with large employee numbers and heavy union interaction. He has led turnaround consultancy projects, including formal and informal interim CFO roles, strategic project management roles and reviews/implementation of turnaround and finance plans.
Director
Joseph Hansell
FTI Consulting
Joseph Hansell is a specialist in corporate recovery, restructuring and turnaround management in Australia, advising corporates, lenders and capital providers. Joseph has industry expertise in retail, property, manufacturing, aviation, managed investment schemes and financial services and products.
Director
Richard Hughes
Deloitte
Richard is the Queensland Restructuring Services Lead Partner. He specialises in corporate insolvency and business turnaround and has over 20 years of professional experience. His clients include corporates, major financiers and other professional advisors. Richard has a broad range of experience across a range of sectors, including manufacturing, property, retail, tourism, motor vehicle dealers; however, his main specialty is Agribusiness.
Director
Alinta Kemeny
Ashurst Australia
Alinta Kemeny is a partner in Ashurst’s restructuring and special situations team. Alinta has expertise in large cross border corporate restructuring, refinancing, formal insolvency and special situations work and she specialises in complex multi-jurisdictional financial restructuring matters. Alinta works for a wide range of debtors, banks, distressed fund investors and insolvency practitioners.
Director
Jeffrey Largier
Allegro Funds
Jeffrey has over ten years of experience in investment banking and private equity. Jeffrey commenced his career at UBS Investment Bank in Sydney in 2007, where he worked in the General Industrials and Financial Institutions Groups. While at UBS, Jeffrey was involved in advising a range of clients across private equity and corporates on buy-side, sell-side and capital raising engagements.
Jeffrey joined Allegro in 2013. Jeffrey is responsible for deal sourcing, appraisal and execution as well as management of portfolio companies including various operational turnaround initiatives. During his time at Allegro, Jeffrey has been involved in the acquisition, turnaround and/or transformation of TSC Group, Carpet Court, Eagle Boys, JSW Australia, Terrex Seismic and Questas Group.
Director
Maria O’Brien
Clayton Utz
Specialising in both restructuring and insolvency and commercial litigation, Maria acts for distressed or insolvent companies, their external administrators and creditors on a wide range of insolvency issues (both contentious and non-contentious), including informal workouts, with a particular focus on cross-border restructuring and insolvency. Maria is a Fellow of INSOL International (the International Association of Restructuring, Insolvency & Bankruptcy Professionals), and is the Chair (and past President) of the Turnaround Management Association (Australia). She is a member of the External Advisory Committee to the Australian Financial Security Authority (AFSA) and is a Treasury appointment to the Ministerial Pool for Insolvency Practitioner Registration and Disciplinary Committees convened under the Corporations Act.
Director
Alison Robertson
HWLE Ebsworth
For more than 20 years Alison has specialised in all aspects of insolvency, reconstruction and recovery. Alison has consistently acted for major banks, as well as mid-tier lenders, providing strategic advice, and where necessary, acting to enforce securities in the most efficient way, cognisant always of the lender’s policies toward customers.
Alison also acts for insolvency practitioners, both big firm and boutique, in their various roles as receivers, administrators, and liquidators. She brings her significant experience and judgment to every aspect of external administrations.
Alison also specialises in general commercial litigation, including contract disputes, litigation arising from board disputes, representation based claims, partnership and property disputes, with a focus on timely and cost efficient outcomes.
Director
Nikki Smythe
Clifford Chance
Nikki is a partner in the Sydney office of Clifford Chance primarily specializing in restructuring, special situations and structured finance, with extensive experience advising on complex domestic and cross-border financing, debt restructuring and insolvency transactions. Nikki acts for private credit funds, private equity funds, alternative investment funds, corporates, investment banks and other financial institutions on a broad range of financing, restructuring & insolvency matters including special situations lending, structured finance, complex real estate financing transactions, securitisation, rescue finance and restructurings, and distressed loan portfolio sales.
Nikki is highly experienced across a broad range of financing products and across multiple sectors, including real estate, financial services, mining, mining services, aviation, logistics, tech, gaming and healthcare, and uses this experience to help clients find innovative and bespoke financing solutions that meet the needs of their specific situations.
Director
Genevieve Sexton
Arnold Bloch Leibler
Genevieve Sexton practices in commercial and banking and finance law with a strong emphasis on corporate finance transactions and corporate restructures. She has acted for financiers and borrowers, major corporations and family groups in a diverse range of finance and restructuring matters, including corporate finance, property development finance, mezzanine finance, joint ventures, shareholder arrangements and formal and informal corporate restructures.
Director
Chris Turvey
Suncorp Group
Chris has been with Suncorp in Business Customer Support for nearly 20 years. Chris has deep Agribusiness knowledge growing up on a farm in Western Queensland and studying a Bachelor of Agricultural Science at the University of Qld. Chris has a strong interest in managing Financial Difficulty for Agribusiness and Farm Debt Mediation and presented to the Senate Select Committee on Lending to Primary Production Customers in 2017.
Director
Kate White
Glas Agency
Kate joined Global Loan Agency Services Australia (GLAS Australia) on its inception in the Australia market in 2017. Kate has led and contributed to building the business in Australia to a level where GlAS Australia now manages in excess of 150 financial transaction and has a growing team of 15 staff.