About

For the past eight years David Wenck has been head of legal and group general counsel for Aurizon Holdings, leading a high performance in-house legal team comprised of 15 lawyers. The scale and complexity of Aurizon’s business requires both technically excellent and commercially astute legal support, so over the last eight years Wenck has made it a priority to recruit and train a team that is proficient in a range of relevant practice areas.

These include M&A, anti-trust, economic regulation, health and safety, environment, property, dispute resolution and major contracts such as IPCT, projects and procurement. Specific highlights of Wenck’s tenure include the creation of a separate independent legal function with all lawyers reporting to the general counsel and a legal team structure that can flex with and adapt to company restructures in a way that enables consistent delivery of legal services to the business. He has embedded senior Aurizon lawyers in business leadership teams, including the general counsel being a member of the executive leadership team, implementing innovative solutions for the delivery of legal services and, in particular, around document management and litigation support. He has also been central to the setup of a panel of key legal firms, with the benefits being the cost effective and highly relevant delivery of legal services to the company and board. He has successfully overseen a number of completed transactions including the firm’s demerger from QLD Rail and listing Aurizon on the Australian Securities Exchange, the latter transaction taking Aurizon from government ownership to a top 30 ASX publicly listed company.

He has also overseen the takeover of Aquila and the establishment of the Western Pilbara Iron Ore Rail and Port Project which he says was a transaction that ‘set up Aurizon for growth in new markets’, as well as ‘litigation on the Wiggins Island Rail Project and the sale of intermodal assets and litigation to clear that transaction through the Federal Court’. On the progression of his career, Wenck says that, ‘the general counsel role has enabled me to more effectively develop my commercial acumen and delivery of legal services, in a way that genuinely adds value to Aurizon’s commercial activities. These are skills that are not easily developed or deployed when in private practice’.