Sale of Sydney Basin Airports

An AGS national legal team assisted the Department of Finance and Administration in the successful sale of the Bankstown, Camden and Hoxton Park airports, known as the Sydney Basin Airports.

The airports were sold by the Government for $211 million in December 2003 to the BaCH Airports Consortium, which included the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the James Fielding Group and Westscheme.

Led by John Scala, AGS Chief Counsel Commercial, the transaction involved the AGS team in intensive work on a range of complex legal, process and practical issues, including:

• input into a scoping study to determine the preferred method of sale, and to identify key risks
• establishment of cooperative arrangements with the airports
• vendor and purchaser due diligence arrangements
• development of innovative technology by AGS’s Legal Technology Team to manage the buyer ‘question and answer’ process
• a suite of interlinked agreements comprising the contractual sale documentation
• the provision of detailed process advice at each key stage of the sale process.