Deacons worked closely with Yahoo!’s general counsel, Stuart Granger and regional corporate development director, South Asia, Phil Alexander. Deacons corporate partner Nick Humphrey, who headed the firm’s team on the transaction, said it had been successfully closed within several weeks of agreement being reached with Fairfax.

Humphrey said one of the challenges of the transaction was the process of preparing several lengthy, strategic documents for settlement in a short period of time, which was complicated by the need to obtain sign-off from the different departments of Yahoo! in Australia, the United States and Asia.

“The biggest issue was, obviously, they have got different laws and expectations and contracting processes — what they were expecting was not necessarily in an Australian contract.”

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Humphrey was assisted on the deal by corporate lawyer Daniel Atkin, David Stavropoulos, a partner from the tax group, and Stephanie Randell, a senior associate specialising in GST. The transaction was completed in February 2005.