About

Richard Dammery’s career can be divided into three almost equal parts; private legal practice, in-house legal, and commercial general management. He trained as an M&A lawyer at Freehill Hollingdale & Page – now Herbert Smith Freehills – before moving into the corporate sector. His first in-house role was as manager of regulatory policy at Telstra between 1995 and 1997, after which he was approached to become the head of legal at Telecom New Zealand (TCNZ), and ended up spending eight years with the TCNZ Group between 1997 and 2004.

At TCNZ, he left the law for a time and was responsible for Australian and New Zealand network capacity planning and network investment, and oversaw the “Interconnect & Wholesale” teams. He then switched industries and became general counsel and company secretary of Coles Group, where he led the transaction teams that sold Myer to TPG Capital in 2006 then Coles Group to Wesfarmers in 2007, both of which were amongst the largest transactions of their kind. In 2007, in the aftermath of Coles Group being acquired by Wesfarmers, Dammery left the group to return to private legal practice as an M&A partner at Minter Ellison between 2008 and 2014.

In 2014, Dammery accepted his current role at Woolworths Group, as chief legal officer and company secretary. In his current role he has had a number of business affecting achievements, including the reduction of the total cost of legal services for the Group, internal and external, from over $70m AUD when he arrived in 2014 to around $40m AUD in 2018. This has happened despite increased demand and some very significant transactions and litigations in this time. To make changes of this magnitude sustainably, Woolworths Group has had to adapt the legal services delivery model fundamentally, and Dammery explains that the business is now ‘unashamedly, an in-house law firm, with high calibre lawyers doing as much work as we can ourselves’. He adds: ‘We continue to push this model as far as we can [and] when we go external, we work only with trusted lawyers who understand our business and are prepared to walk in our shoes’.

This model has made a big difference to the firm’s operations and has contributed to several important projects in-line with achieving Woolworths Group’s business agenda, including the management of a restructuring and a revision of a fuel partnership with Caltex. The company has had to defend itself from litigation from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on alleged unconscionable conduct, and a major class action launched by a leading litigation funder, both seen off after adopting an innovative defence strategy. Under Dammery’s leadership the Woolworths Group legal team led these efforts, as well as concluding the closure of its Masters Home Improvement chain which involved three simultaneous transactions. These were the sale of Home Timber & Hardware, an underwritten inventory clearance process by Great American Group (the largest in Australia) and a transaction with a private consortium to assume property liabilities and repurpose the stores into a new retail offer (Home Consortium). These transactions were undertaken in less than nine months, an incredible feat considering their size and complexity, and are further proof of Dammery’s place as one of the preeminent corporate counsels in Australia.