Telstra Corporation Limited

Goldman Sachs was the business adviser to the Commonwealth of Australia in the further privatization of Telstra, the national telecommunications company. The offering raised $10 billion for the Australian government, and was the largest share offering in Australian history and one of the largest anywhere in the world in 1999. The Australian government was the book runner and therefore had ultimate control of the final allocations to investors. As the business adviser, we assisted in structuring the offering, in analyzing the potential investor response, and in timing and pricing the transaction. This was an especially challenging transaction because the United States equity market went into decline during the marketing period– –posing potential problems for pricing and distributing the offering internationally. With our firm's knowledge of the global investment community and new issue market, we felt confident in advising our client to price the issue above the closing market price. Investors responded enthusiastically in the aftermarket, enabling the Australian government to achieve its two major goals: completing the offering at a very healthy price and increasing Australian share ownership among individual investors. In fact, the Telstra offering resulted in some 400,000 Australians investing in the Australian share market for the first time.