Renee Stiles

Profile

Renee is a partner in our Wellington corporate and commercial team, with deep expertise in technology, media and telecommunications (TMT), artificial intelligence and emerging technology, government and defence procurement, complex commercial contracting, payments and financial services, and corporate transactions.

Renee brings over 20 years' TMT experience to her practice, including advising on AI-driven solutions, and drafting and negotiating large-scale and complex ICT and outsourcing contracts for both public sector and private clients. She is highly experienced in government and defence procurement, e-commerce, data licensing, data protection and privacy, and intellectual property commercialisation.

Renee also advises on corporate transactions, including mergers and acquisitions and capital raising, and on the development of financial applications and payments products for financial institutions, fintechs and corporates.

Renee's experience spans a diverse range of industries including banking, defence, telecommunications, transit, media, energy, government and aviation. She is trusted by large and small organisations alike to develop key contractual relationships, commercialise intellectual property and develop customer terms.

Market recognition

"The strong and pragmatic focus of Renee and the Buddle Findlay team in partnering to develop the agreements ensured an excellent outcome for all our stakeholders" - Current client

"Renee Stiles is well-versed in the drafting and negotiation of ICT and outsourcing contracts." - Legal 500

Recognised as a 'Next Generation Partner' for TMT by Legal 500

Member of the Institute of Information Technology Professionals

Associate Chartered Accountant

Work highlights

Advising Southland Building Society (SBS), a registered bank

on the negotiation of contracts for the design, implementation and support of a new cloud-based banking platform to replace SBS's legacy banking systems (the Future Bank Programme), the biggest development in SBS's 155-year history, involving extensive negotiation with the UK based platform vendor and implementation partner

Advising the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) and Ministry of Transport

on the procurement of an all of government, AI-driven maritime domain awareness system (Data Fusion Solution) to identify, assess and mitigate maritime threats to New Zealand, including drafting and negotiating the master services agreement, creating service delivery agreements, drafting a memorandum of understanding governing access by approximately 20 government agencies, and negotiating a related agreement with Kordia Limited for Terrestrial Automatic Identification System data

Advising BV Investment Partners

on aspects of its strategic investment into Kami, a leading classroom engagement and teacher productivity content provider to the US and global K12 market

Advising the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE)

on its AoG banking return to market procurement process for transactional banking, foreign exchange, payment and card services, including advising and assisting with all phases of the procurement process and leading negotiations with respondents that have been shortlisted for appointment to the panel of providers. Negotiations are expected to conclude in mid 2023

Advising Hutt City Council, GWRC and Waka Kotahi

in relation to the Riverlink project focussing on partnering and commercial contract arrangements, including aligning partnering governance and funding agreements with the Waka Kotahi standard form Alliance documentation

Advising MBIE

in relation to the establishment of a cloud framework agreement TechnologyOne working alongside MBIE's finance systems, control and procurement team, to negotiate the terms of the agreement, including liaison with a cross government governance group (consisting of key agencies who wish to transition to TechnologyOne's cloud services)

Acting for the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF)

in negotiating and drafting the new Maritime Fleet Sustainment Services Agreement (MFSS) – Hāpai Taua Manuao a long term contract to operate and manage the engineering services at the Devonport naval base which provides engineering support to RNZN’s fleet with a focus on the information security and data protection aspects of the new arrangements

Advising Waka Kotahi

on Project Next the national ticketing project to create a nationwide open loop, account based, public transport payment system. Renee's role in this project has included focusing on mitigation of risks to Waka Kotahi when undertaking its role as the solution operator while balancing its statutory functions, managing and allocating funding from the NLTF, and providing sufficient flexibility for the public transport authorities to meet their responsibilities to their respective regions

Acting for CFG

on a large forest portfolio acquisition in the Wellington region

Advising Infratil and Brookfield

on their $3.4b acquisition of One NZ (formerly Vodafone New Zealand)

Advising Infratil

on the sale of Snapper Services

Advisor on venture capital funding rounds

including for IMAGR

Advising Contact Energy

on its acquisition of Simply Energy

Advising on the syndicated procurement

of national infrastructure platforms across multiple government common capability agreements, including infrastructure as a service, telecommunications as a service and IT managed services

Advising the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment

on the procurement of a hosted platform for MBIE's Occupational Licensing Common Platform which is to be provided as a hybrid of Software as a Service (SaaS) and traditional build and implementation concepts

Drafting and negotiation of information technology documentation

including syndicated and multi-sourcing procurement, intellectual property commercialisation, licensing arrangements, infrastructure outsourcing and migration/systems design, build, purchase and implementation, SaaS, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Advising a global technology company

on the New Zealand law implications of their various product offerings

Advising on the unique issues that arise in respect of cloud services

and data protection, privacy policies, legal issues arising from use of social media platforms and the development of privacy, data protection and social media policies

Drafting and negotiation of general commercial contracts

including sale and purchase agreements outsourcing and service agreements and supply arrangements

Advising on the negotiation of cross-border contracts

compliance with government procurement policies and procedures and public finance requirements and restrictions

Advising a card scheme

on the New Zealand legal implications of implementing tokenisation to make mobile and online payments

Advising a global switching and acquiring company

on the New Zealand law implications of their various product offerings, including payment methods used and payments industry practice in the New Zealand market

Advising a payments switch

on the restructure of its subsidiary company mobile payments operation

Advising a major financial institution

on its merchant acquiring agreements and payment gateway merchant product offerings

Advising on compliance

with regulatory requirements including Reserve Bank of New Zealand Banking Standards

Experience

Sector/Expertise

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