Asia Lenard is Of Counsel in Quinn Emanuel’s Sydney office. She joined the firm in 2016, and worked for three years in financial litigation in the New York office, before returning to Sydney. Asia’s practice focuses on complex commercial litigation involving, among other things, insolvency and restructuring, financial instruments, regulatory investigations, government decisions and insurance.
While working in Quinn Emanuel’s New York office, Asia worked on several multi-billion dollar lawsuits, including some of the largest cases that came out of the GFC, for example Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s $2 billion trial against Citibank NA concerning close-out costs from derivative trades between the two banks. Prior to joining the firm, Asia worked for more than 10 years for a leading Australian independent corporate law firm.
Asia holds a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Arts from the University of New South Wales and a Master of Laws from the University of Sydney.
- Grocon
- Connective
- Express Scripts
- Macquarie Capital
- Lehman Brothers Estate
- SAMI Bitumen Technologies
- Telstra
- Westpac
- Representing Grocon in proceedings against Infrastructure NSW concerning Grocon’s exit from the much-delayed Central Barangaroo development.
- Representing pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts in a $15 billion contract dispute with its largest client, Anthem.
- Representing the managing director of a major asset-based lender in Receiver examinations, Supreme Court proceedings by the receiver, class action proceedings by debenture-holders and an AAT appeal.
- Representing Connective, Australia’s major mortgage aggregator and non-bank home loan-provider, in oppression proceedings in the Supreme Court of Victoria.
- Represented the Lehman Brothers Estate in derivatives disputes with Citibank and Credit Suisse, the former of which required Citi to return $1.74 billion of the $2 billion in collateral that it held at the time of Lehman’s default. Settlement was reached after a 6 month trial in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.
- Acted for Australia’s largest bitumen importer, SAMI Bitumen Technologies, in proceedings against an international bitumen procurement company.
- Represented the Truth, Justice, Healing Council established by the Catholic Church to respond to the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
- Advised an energy and mining sector service provider on potential class action proceedings.
- Acted for a major Australian trading bank in connection with an ASIC investigation into misconduct by multiple home finance managers.
- Acted for Startel Communications in successful injunction proceedings in the Queensland Supreme Court.
- Represented Telstra in successful Federal Court proceedings against the ACCC and three of Telstra’s wholesale customers seeking to restrain the ACCC from arbitrating the Charges in Telstra’s customer relationship agreement with each of the wholesale customers.
- Acted for Prosperity Advisers in multiple consecutive Supreme Court proceedings against its professional indemnity insurers.
- Represented Metgasco in successful judicial review proceedings against the Minister for Resources and Energy.
- Represented the MJD Foundation in successful judicial review proceedings against the Minister for Indigenous Affairs.
- University of Sydney
(LL.M., 2014) - University of New South Wales
(B.A., 2001)
(LL.B., 2001)
- The Supreme Court of New South Wales
- The Federal Court of Australia
- The High Court of Australia
- The State Bar of New York
- United States Court of Appeals:
- Second Circuit
- United States District Court:
- Southern District of New York
- Quinn Emanuel Note, The Privilege of Being In-house (December 2020)
- With A Floro, L Tomkins and M McGirr, Insuring against costly cybercrime: what can you do?, Lexology.com, 2015
- With A Floro, L Tomkins and M McGirr, The regulatory web: step up in regulatory activity and supervision of data breaches, Lexology.com, 2015
- With A Floro, L Tomkins and M McGirr, Is your customer data at risk? Data breach incidents can result in legal claims and regulatory intervention, Lexology.com, 2015
- With S Glass, M Graham and H Quadrio, Proper process, not politics, should prevail in government decision-making, Lexology.com, 2015
- With A Floro, Section 54 of the Insurance Contracts Act: still an insured’s best friend, Lexology.com, 2014
- With C Lynch, D&O insurance: Defence costs under threat, Law Society Journal, 2014
- With S Glass, A Annan and G Campbell, Ch 2: Australia in Clark, R (Ed.), The Dispute Resolution Review, 2009
- Casenote: Andrew Bruce Thorpe v Ricardo Vatner in Lexis Nexis Butterworths, Civil Procedure News New South Wales, Volume 2 Number 1, 2004
- Mostly Mad Music, Board Member and Company Secretary
- The MJD Foundation, Board Risk Sub-Committee Member
- Member, Law Society of New South Wales