Suggestions
Joel Cox
Partner, DLA Piper
Joel Cox is a Partner at global law firm DLA Piper, based in Australia.3 He is known for his considerable experience in advising on various aspects of public and private company M&A, equity capital markets transactions, and private equity and venture capital.12
Cox has established himself as a legal counsel of choice and long-term trusted advisor to many of the fastest-growing tech companies in the Asia Pacific region.3 His expertise in working with fast-growth tech companies has been particularly notable since the COVID-19 lockdowns.4
As part of DLA Piper's team in Australia and New Zealand, Cox has been involved in supporting emerging technology companies. He is also associated with DLA Piper Accelerate, a platform designed to assist startups and emerging growth companies.5
Cox's LinkedIn profile (username: joel-cox-10255b22) reflects his role as a Partner at DLA Piper Australia, emphasizing his focus on advising rapidly expanding technology companies in the Asia Pacific area.3
Highlights
There are a lot of doomsday predictions circulating in Australia and New Zealand about VC and tech deals, so I wanted to share our perspectives as lawyers to many of the regions fastest growing companies and investors into them.
We continue to see excellent tech deals getting done in Australia and New Zealand and while dollars invested are down compared to past years, the market is proving resilient for a high proportion of our clients. Even for those clients who have their back up against the wall, we are seeing them achieve some great outcomes with capital raising and/or a shift to profitability. People are in the trenches, working incredibly hard and building some great businesses out of the public's attention.
Our view is that the financial press and local deal tracking continue to miss a large number of completed deals and things are not as bad as people are reporting. In particular, they are missing many of the local corporate venture, family office, buyout and script deals that we have advised on. Deals also typically become public 2 to 3 months after execution.
Exits by local VC backed businesses to US private equity funds, script for script mergers of equals, corporate venture investments and large seed and series A deals at strong valuations are the most active areas for us at present.
We are still seeing strong interest in Australia and New Zealand from US investors.
We advise on about 100 tech deals locally each year and we are on track to do that again this year.
Things are very quiet for us regarding tech IPOs and we are generally not seeing ASX listed buyers doing tech M&A in the market at present or European or Asian investors. But tech disruption is only accelerating and the challenges and opportunities from our energy transition, AI, fintech disruption, ecommerce, the shift of health services to the cloud, advanced manufacturing and cyber security are not going away.
We expect local trade buyers to return to the tech M&A market soon, local and US private equity funds to maintain strong deal momentum and the National Reconstruction Fund to spur significant investment activity. Those investing now will reap the rewards of that in our opinion.
