Marilyn Mrkusich

Special Counsel

Marilyn is a senior lawyer who advises on a wide range of corporate, commercial, and private wealth matters. She assists clients with mergers and acquisitions (M&A), negotiating and drafting commercial contracts, joint venture and shareholder arrangements, compliance with legislation governing companies, partnership and other structures, and structuring personal affairs.

Marilyn advises a diverse range of clients including individuals, not-for-profit entities, privately owned businesses, and large corporates.

She has a particular interest in supporting privately owned businesses and working alongside clients in the start-up and venture space. Marilyn regularly assists clients with documenting their investments and shareholder relationships, including through term sheets, share subscription agreements, shareholder agreements, and limited partnership agreements.

In the not-for-profit space, Marilyn works with clients ranging from grassroots sports clubs to nationally recognised bodies, including incorporated societies and charitable trusts. She advises on all aspects of their life cycle, from establishment and charitable registration to restructuring and dissolution. Her expertise includes preparing and updating constitutional documents and advising on compliance with legislation such as the Incorporated Societies Act, the Charitable Trusts Act, and the Charities Act.

As part of our Private Wealth team, Marilyn is a trusted adviser to high-net-worth individuals helping to appropriately structure their personal affairs and preserve wealth for future generations. She advises on asset structuring and establishment and administration of trusts, including compliance with duties and obligations under the Trusts Act.

Marilyn builds close relationships with her clients to understand their business and commercial environment and provide meaningful, pragmatic legal advice. Her broad experience enables her to proactively identify and advise her clients on a wide range of issues. She often acts a client’s first port of call. As one client says, “We have a very high level of confidence in Marilyn’s ability to provide expert solutions to an extensive range of legal matters. Marilyn is able to carefully navigate issues and provides well researched and pragmatic solutions for our business”. Her in-house experience, including at Deloitte and One NZ (previously Vodafone), gives her a strong appreciation of the need to balance commercial drivers with legal constraints.

Career highlights

Advising AgriZeroNZ, a public private partnership, on its restructure from an incorporated joint venture company to a limited partnership, including the admission of new participants. The structure involved complex stakeholder engagement with diverse participants – dairy companies, banks, agribusinesses, and the Crown. Ongoing assistance includes advising on corporate governance matters and supporting AgriZeroNZ with its investments in emissions reduction technologies.

Regularly assisting venture capitalists and private equity firms with investments, particularly in the deep tech space. Each investment requires a unique approach depending on the stage of technology development and both the founders’ and investors’ ambitions.

Assisting the Royal New Zealand Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Inc with its nationwide restructure, which involved the integration of approximately 40 local SPCA centres into one national body. The restructure involved a number of complexities such as the transfer of somewhat unknown assets and liabilities, honouring the wishes attached to existing bequests, and working with centres operated by volunteers already overstretched with the day to day needs of animals in their care.

Advising Auckland One Rail Limited (a joint venture between Singaporean company ComfortDel Gro Transit Pte Ltd and Australian company UGL Rail Pty Ltd) on the acquisition of the incumbent provider of Auckland metro rail services to Auckland Transport.

Affiliations
  • Member, Auckland Women Lawyers’ Association (AWLA)
  • Member, New Zealand Animal Law Association (NZALA)
Achievements and recognition
  • Tier 1 team, Corporate and M&A, The Legal 500 Asia-Pacific
  • Recognised team, Corporate/Commercial, Chambers Asia-Pacific