Neil Pathak and Tim McEwen of Freehills and Minter Ellison's Russell Miller have advised on the A$1bn Orica-DuluxGroup demerger which will see  the creation of a new, stand-alone, ASX-listed company by scheme of arrangement.  It is the first significant demerger to have been completed in the Australian market since 2008 and the ASX listing of the DuluxGroup business is the largest listing since last year's Myer IPO, in which Freehills was also involved.

Other work Freehills has performed for Orica includes the sale of its A$860m IPL shareholding while Minter Ellison has advised new company DuluxGroup GC Simon Black on the demerger since the idea was initially proposed in 2008 but postponed due to economic conditions.