Johnson Winter & Slattery has appointed three senior practitioners from Gilbert + Tobin, Blake Dawson and UK law firm SJ Berwin LLP.

Marko Komadina, partner and mergers and acquisitions specialist, joins from the Gilbert + Tobin partnership. Komadina specialises in listed company takeovers, schemes of arrangement, demergers and corporate restructures.

Also joining JWS is Andrew Williams, special counsel from Blake Dawson who brings extensive experience in negotiated mergers and acquisitions, foreign investment, cross-border transactions, joint ventures, private equity and major commercial transactions, the firm said.  

Michael Bywell, partner, a senior dispute resolution lawyer with particular expertise in managing disputes for participants in the IT sector. Michael has previously practised in New Zealand and the UK, most recently as a Partner in the UK firm SJ Berwin LLP.

“Despite a general slowdown in public mergers and acquisitions activity in Australia, we are taking a long term view on activity in that sector by building the capability of our teams whenever high quality individuals become available to us," said Peter Slattery, JWS national managing partner.

"Similarly, we are delighted that Michael Bywell, a lawyer with experience in representing multi-national corporations on complex cross-border disputes, will be adding additional depth to our commercial dispute resolution capability, particularly in the IT area."

The appointments of Komadina and Williams reflect the continuing growth and development of the JWS mergers and acquisitions team nationally, the firm said in a statement. 

"[It has been] a year in which the firm has already advised on completed M&A transactions with an equity value of well over $3B, with in excess of a further $3B by equity value of announced but uncompleted deals."