As Stace Hammond’s Managing Partner I have wide experience in providing legal advice to the corporate and commercial sector on business and finance legal issues. My clients range from large corporates to SMEs, finance institutions to family offices, private trusts and individuals as well as charities, not-for-profits and social enterprises. The latter has included primary advice for various charities, credit unions and Maori land claims.
My legal advice is prefaced by working with my clients to first understand their desired outcomes and then discussing with them the likely commercial and legal obstructions that need to be overcome before arriving at a practical legal solution rather than a legal process-driven one.
My depth and breadth of experience allows my clients to have confidence in my ability to negotiate and liaise with parties at all levels of seniority and irrespective of the size of their organisation. Drawing on experience with business in New Zealand, Australia and the USA (the latter including as the client dealing with US attorneys) I provide an innovative and commercially sound approach to solutions for my clients and can work with them within multiple highly complex and commercially sensitive environments.
Practice areas:
- Corporate Governance And Advisory
- Business, Venture And Investment Structuring
- Banking and Finance
- Investment and Business Trusts
- International Trade And Cross-Border Transactions
- Private Equity, Venture Capital and Capital Markets
- Start-up and Growth Business
- Managed and Impact Funds, Non-Bank Deposit Takers and public offerings of financial products
- Charities, Not-For-Profit and Social Enterprise
- Agribusiness
- Overseas Investors and Onshore Structuring For Offshore Investors
- Intellectual Property and Innovation
- Technology & Digital
I offer an innovative perspective for business and finance legal solutions in a number of areas including:
- Structuring of financing arrangements, managed funds and capital markets issues. I devised New Zealand’s first immigration-qualifying property-backed Residential Investment Fund.
- Diverse overseas trade arrangements and structuring matters including offshore investment into New Zealand.
- Representing a client’s interests at a senior level before the United States Department of Defense in Washington D.C. and advising on diverse US trade compliance and structuring matters including trade treaty-effective arrangements for offshore transactions.
- Compliance for Financial Markets Supervisors and Managers and associated fiduciary duties.
- Assisting claimants in various Waitangi Tribunal claims and with the Office of Treaty Settlements. I was lead advisor to the priority claimants leading up to the 1987 Maori Council settlement and the original filing of the Waikato River claim.
- Acting for financial product issuers in relation to compliance with the Financial Markets Conduct Act and related legislation.
- Structured finance, securitisation and factoring, mezzanine finance options, managed funds and various tax effective mixed income/capital instruments.
- Representation at Government Ministerial and Departmental level on policy matters on behalf of and involving clients, including to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, Treasury and Inland Revenue Department.
Professional Associations:
- Director (mostly as Chairman) of a number of privately owned companies involved in financial services, consultancy, intellectual property based-product development, sales and equity funding,
- Advisor to a number of charities, principally with social service objects, as well as to the firm’s associated charitable trust Kaitiakitanga Charitable Trust
- New Zealand Law Society – District Taxation Committee,
- Long-serving association with a charitable foundation as Director, and chairman of its Allocations Committee.
