About

‘The ultimate goal of the Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) legal team is to provide excellent and pragmatic advice and support, to ensure that Vodafone meets its objectives with acceptable levels of risk. The culture is to work hard to achieve the results and outcomes on each project or transaction and to take an appropriate level of accountability for the outcome’ says VHA’s distinguished general counsel Trent Czinner. A function made up of 16 lawyers and two non-lawyers, the team has the ultimate goal of providing the best service possible, as Czinner explains: ‘The legal team now manages virtually all work electronically and can easily work remotely. This freedom to work anywhere in the VHA building or from home has created the opportunity for excellent work-life balance’. Three tangible impacts were cited by Czinner in particular, namely a new dealer licencing model for Vodafone store premises, changes for more ‘agile’ technology contracts and its work on the insolvency of one of VHA’s largest dealers. Complementing these impacts is the team’s work on several important transactions crucial to VHA’s business; from 2016 to 2017 the team led judicial review proceedings in relation to the declaration inquiry for domestic mobile roaming, successfully obtaining spectrum at a nationwide auction for a price of $285m AUD, the successful development and implementation of the government mandated Data Retention system, the acquisition of the Lebara mobile brand and customers as well as a new contract to completely transform the core of the Vodafone network including virtualisation of the servers. This was a transformative technical project that required a high degree of legal support and advice. The launch and further integration of the Kogan mobile brand was also worked on by the legal team, Kogan being a second brand operated by VHA under an innovative licencing model and has beaten forecasts due to the innovative structure of the contract. Establishing close and key relationships within business, Czinner states that the team ‘has also developed trust and credibility with senior management and as a result they are consulted on a wide range of matters and able to influence strategy development and the decision making process’.