The law firm said it managed to finish its part of the work for the $35 million investment by Next Capital in SteelForce within the relatively short time of 31 days.

Private equity specialist Peter Feros and Brett Heading of McCulloughs’ corporate advisory group headed the legal team.

Feros said these types of deals normally take between one to three months, but with a lot of late nights they were able to complete the deal at the bottom end of that scale.

Prior to agreeing to the offer from Next Capital, SteelForce had been working towards an IPO, and was keen on a speedy deal. “One of the attractions for SteelForce was that we could deliver on quite an ambitious timetable,” said Feros.

“We put forward documents that were not entirely one-sided and commercially reasonable documents, and I think that got us a long way to getting a deal done in that timeframe.”

He said the fact that OneSteel and Smorgan, two of the largest steel producers in Australia, announced a merger during the transaction highlighted the fact that the steel industry is an attractive and interesting sector to be in at the moment.

The investment will allow it to build a national distribution network in addition to its centres in Queensland and New South Wales and broaden the range of products it manufactures. The company also owns and operates a steel mill in northern China.

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Next Capital was established by three former private equity executives from Macquarie Bank.