Angela Harford

Partner, Bell Gully

Angela is a corporate and commercial lawyer with specialist expertise in infrastructure, energy, major projects and significant public sector reform. She is known for her strategic thinking and ability to deliver on highly complex projects and transactions.

Angela acts for a broad range of public and private sector clients on their highest profile and most complex commercial matters, including large-scale infrastructure projects, joint ventures, major procurement and tendering processes and regulatory reform.

She has extensive experience in transport infrastructure, renewable and non-renewable energy (including power purchase agreements and electricity regulatory matters) social and economic infrastructure, public housing, defence and education.

Angela has particular expertise in public private partnership (PPP) procurement. She is currently acting for the NZ Transport Agency on the Northland Corridor PPP project, one of the most significant infrastructure upgrade investments to be undertaken in New Zealand and also act for the Crown in relation to the prisons and schools PPPs.

Contributed to

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Doing business in: New Zealand

Practice Notes

IntroductionNew Zealand has a deregulated, decentralised economy directly exposed to international competition. Over recent decades, successive New Zealand governments have reformed New Zealand’s trade rules by removing many barriers to imports, ending most subsidies, and ensuring that the rules relating to overseas investment are designed to encourage productive overseas investment in New Zealand.The business environmentNew Zealand is consistently ranked by the World Bank and others as one of the most business-friendly countries in the world. New Zealand was ranked as the sixth best country for Operational Efficiency and Public Services in the World Bank’s Business Ready 2024 report and as the fourth least corrupt country in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2024.New Zealand is an independent sovereign state and a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Parliament is triennially democratically elected. New Zealand does not have a written constitution. The electoral system became a ‘Mixed Member Proportional’ representation system in 1993, which generally results in coalition governments led by either the National

Commercial