Tony Damian

Practice Areas

Tony is widely regarded as one of Australia’s leading M&A lawyers.

Tony has a track record of helping clients achieve their goals in the most complex and significant transactions. For over 25 years, Tony has assisted clients by providing strategic and practical advice. The Chambers Global and Asia-Pacific Guides have rated Tony for a number of years as one of only a small handful of Band 1 M&A lawyers in Australia, with clients in the 2025 edition saying “He is easily the best M&A lawyer in Australia” and “He combines high levels of experience, deep technical capability, pragmatic and thorough advice and an ability to deliver at the board level.” Tony is in the 2024 Legal 500 Powerlist 2024 – M&A – Asia Pacific, as well as the 2021 Legal 500 Hall of Fame with one client noting: “Tony Damian is in my view the country’s leading M&A lawyer these days. He has unrivalled technical skills but also is acutely commercial, practical, and responsive. His list of marquee transactions is testimony to the regard in which he is held in the market.

Tony has won the Australasian Law Awards Australian Dealmaker of the Year for the last four consecutive years that it was held as an individual award (2023 (joint winner), 2022, 2021 and 2020), and was then selected for the inaugural 2024 Australasian Law Dealmakers’ List. At the 2023 awards one judge’s comment was: “Tony is at the top of his game and the top of M&A legal practice in Australia, both as a practitioner and as a thought leader.” Tony was included in the inaugural 2021 Australasian Lawyer Most Influential Lawyers list and also in its 2022, 2023 and 2024 lists.

Tony recently won Partner of the Year, as well as the overall Excellence Award, at the 2024 Lawyers’ Weekly Australian Law Awards. He is also the Lawyers’ Weekly 2022 and 2021 M&A Partner of the Year, 2021 Australian Law Awards Partner of the Year, and 2024 and 2020 Commercial Partner of the Year. Tony won Dealmaker of the Year at the 2010 Lawyers’ Weekly Awards and again at the 2014 Awards. He has been nominated a further eight times for Dealmaker of the Year by Lawyers’ Weekly and Australasian Legal Business. Tony was also the MergerLinks Top M&A Lawyer for Australia and New Zealand in 2021 and 2020, winning its M&A deal league tables in both years, with a 2021 deal value over £29 billion.

Tony is co-author of Schemes, Takeovers and Himalayan Peaks, a leading book on public company mergers that founded the Ross Parsons Centre monograph series at the University of Sydney. Now in its fourth edition, the book has been described by the Chief Justice of New South Wales as the “pre-eminent text” in the area and has been cited in over 50 judgments. Tony is the co-editor of Before You Tie the Knot, a major book on joint venture law and also of Towns Under Siege, a major book on contemporary issues in takeovers. He is also General Editor of the Australian Journal of Corporate Law. Tony is also the co-host of the podcast series Himalayan Bites, which looks into topical M&A issues.

Most recently, Tony has co-edited Bootmakers, Boards and Rogues, a major new book published in 2023 on corporate and securities law. ASIC Chair Joseph Longo, who wrote the foreword for the book, described it as “informative, thought-provoking and rich in analysis and ideas.”

Tony co-founded The M&A Conference, an annual charity conference run in conjunction with Allens and King & Wood Mallesons, in partnership with the Australian Financial Review and in support of The Black Dog Institute, a leading mental health charity.

Background

Tony holds a Bachelor of Economics, Bachelor of Laws (Honours) and Master of Laws from the University of Sydney.

He was formerly a tutor in law at St Andrew’s College at the University of Sydney, and also a lecturer in takeovers at the university. Tony currently serves on the board of directors of Loreto Kirribilli Limited.