Gerard M. D. Bean

Background

Bean's documented formation took place in Victoria, the Australian state whose capital, Melbourne, is home to the Supreme Court of Victoria, the state's highest court of general jurisdiction. He studied law at Monash University, which was established in 1958 in Clayton, a Melbourne suburb, as the second university to open in Victoria after the University of Melbourne. His legal qualifications were completed in this Victorian setting before he was admitted to practise in the state in 1984.

Education

Bean studied law at Monash University, earning a Bachelor of Laws with Honours. Monash was founded in 1958 and was named after the Australian general and engineer Sir John Monash. Its Clayton campus was organised into several faculties, including Law, and the university's rapid growth in the 1960s reflected the expansion of Australian higher education during that decade.

Bean later studied at the University of Cambridge between 1989 and 1992. Cambridge is a collegiate university whose origins date to the early thirteenth century, and its law teaching is associated with a long tradition of scholarship in English common law and equity. His later qualification as a solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales in 1992 places his English professional training in the same period.

Career

Bean was admitted as a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria in 1984. He later worked as a partner at Phillips Fox, a firm with a Melbourne office and a corporate and financial services practice. Phillips Fox was later absorbed into DLA Piper's Australian operations, and the DLA Phillips Fox name was closed when the global firm opened for business in Australia.

Within DLA Phillips Fox, Bean headed the firm's TransTasman Tax Practice, which advised on tax matters across Australia and New Zealand. His practice also covered mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, corporate governance, private equity and energy and natural resources work, according to later professional profiles.

DLA Piper is a global law firm with offices in more than forty countries, formed in 2005 through a merger of three firms. In Melbourne, Bean is documented as a partner in the firm's corporate group, where he advises on mergers and acquisitions, restructurings and employee share schemes. He has also presented on corporate governance and environmental, social and governance issues.

Bean's public-sector and community work includes leading the team that advised on and established the First Peoples' Assembly of Victoria. He was also the lead author of a technical review of the Corporations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) Act 2006 prepared for the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations.

Achievements

• Ran the High Court test cases FCT v Spriggs and FCT v Riddell, which broke new ground on the deductibility of player agent fees.

• Led the team advising on and establishing the First Peoples' Assembly of Victoria.

• Led a team acting for a leading medical defence organisation in a scheme of arrangement merger valued at AUD 654 million, described as the first merger of medical defence companies limited by guarantee.

Works

• article

  • Reform of employee share schemes: tax view

    (Article co-written with James Newnham and Kelvin Yuen of ...)

    2021

• report

  • Technical Review of the Corporations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) Act 2006

    (Report for the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet a...)

• textbook

  • Moffat's Trusts Law: Text and Materials

    (Sixth edition of the Law in Context textbook published by...)

    2015
  • Trusts Law: Text and Materials

    (Fourth edition of the trusts textbook published by Cambri...)

    2005
  • Trusts Law: Text and Materials

    (Fifth edition of the Law in Context textbook published by...)

    2009
  • Moffat's Trusts Law: Text and Materials

    (Seventh edition of the Law in Context textbook published ...)

    2020

Membership

Bean is a member of the Law Institute of Victoria, the professional body for lawyers in Victoria, where he chairs the Tax and Revenue Committee and has served on the State Taxes Committee. The institute represents practising lawyers and contributes to law reform and professional standards in the state.

He is a Fellow of the Taxation Institute of Australia, a professional body for tax practitioners. Through the Law Council of Australia, the national representative body of the Australian legal profession, he has served on the Tax Committee and was its immediate past national chair. He is also associated with the Cambridge Society, which connects members of the University of Cambridge community.

• Chair of the Tax and Revenue Committee; member of the State Taxes Committee

  Law Institute of Victoria , Australia

• Fellow

  Taxation Institute of Australia , Australia

• Member of the Tax Committee; immediate past national chair of the committee

  Law Council of Australia , Australia

• Cambridge Society

References

• Gerry Bean, Taxation Institute of Australia author profile Profile describing Bean as a partner of DLA Phillips Fox with more than twenty years' experience in tax, as head of its TransTasman Tax Practice and as chair of the Law Institute of Victoria's Tax and Revenue Committee.
• Dr. Gerry Bean, DLA Piper profile Firm profile listing Bean's areas of focus, professional qualifications, memberships and selected matters, including the establishment of the First Peoples' Assembly of Victoria.
• About Victoria Law Foundation Foundation webpage identifying Bean as a nominee of the Law Institute of Victoria in 2021 and a partner in DLA Piper's corporate team.