Negotiaction

Welcome to the Negotiaction website. The purpose of this website is to provide interested parties with general information about our business. Given the sensitive nature of our clients’ strategies and those of our strategic partners we do not provide via this website specific information about our clients and their major projects, or our strategic partners and their offerings. Also, we do not provide detailed information about our executives and employees. However, interested parties are warmly invited to contact our Managing Director at david.laferla@negotiaction.com.au or on +61 3 9639 9030 (office) or +61 418 460 920 (mobile) to explore specific interests in-confidence. Under certain terms and conditions we would be delighted to provide client-sanctioned case material and facilitate introductions to our major clients.

Negotiaction identifies, pursues and secures major projects and market opportunities on behalf of our clients.

Specifically we:

• Undertake rigorous quantitative and qualitative analyses, form views and profiles on current and emerging opportunities in energy and resources, provide perspectives on the underlying uncertainty, complexity and rules of the game, and present to our clients portfolios of options and opportunities that have significant potential in terms of strategic and economic value,
• Identify the major stakeholders and key issues critical to securing each opportunity and determine attractive engagement pathways as events unfold so our clients and strategic partners understand who really matters, what really counts and how they can progress to assume strong positions in their markets, and
• Guide and participate in engagement to increase the likelihood that our clients and strategic partners can negotiate successfully, enter into attractive commercial arrangements, and capture a fair share of the created value.

We assist our clients to secure leadership positions in attractive markets — existing and emerging.

Core and Reinforcing Activities

Our focus on identifying, pursuing and securing major projects and market opportunities is realised through disciplined Market Pursuit and Strategic Partner Pursuit activities.

Negotiaction and its clients pursue market opportunities and strategic partners in a multi-stage option-like manner. Our experience demonstrates that this approach is preferential to the one extreme of clients waiting for the emergence of markets (yielding value to competing firms) and the other extreme of clients making commitments that may not pay off (wasting time, money and other scarce resources).

Activities Realising Results

Negotiaction and its clients are driven by results. In almost all cases this is reflected in their portfolio of major projects and market opportunities.

Negotiaction exists to advance significant opportunities and provoke meaningful game change. In advancing our clients’ and strategic partners’ interests we deal with the trilemma of:

• Energy and Resource Security,
• Natural Security, and
• Economic Security.

We work exclusively in energy and resources. Our work encompasses:

Hydrocarbon energy:

• Traditional (e.g. bituminous coal, lignite, LPG and LNG),
• Emerging and unconventional (e.g. coal seam gas and small scale LNG),
• Technology-enabled resource conversion pathways (e.g. coal-to-liquids), and
• Low-carbon enablers (e.g. CCS and CO2-to-X).

Beyond hydrocarbon energy:

• Renewables and emerging cleantech (e.g. solar, wind, geothermal, wave, and biomass), and
• Alternatives (e.g. nuclear and hydrogen).

Resources:

• Mining (e.g. iron ore mining),
• Minerals processing (e.g. uranium processing), and
• Metals (e.g. steel production).

In the interest of advancing the industries and domains we’re committed to Negotiaction has chaired on a pro bono basis:

• Clean Energy Australia 2008,
• Australian Coal Summit 2008,
• Queensland Power & Gas 2008,
• Coal Seam Methane World 2008,
• Coal Seam Methane World 2009, and
• Power & Electricity World Australia 2009.

Our clients and collaborators include:

• Energy and resources asset owners, strategic investors and project developers,
• Engineering companies,
• Construction companies,
• Technology companies,
• Financiers, and
• Governments.

Our clients and collaborators include both established global players and future energy and resources leaders.

We work with our clients and organisations deemed essential to realising desired outcomes to harness the array of physical and intellectual capital resources available towards fundamentally challenging the traditional games being played in energy and resources markets. In doing so we are guided by value creation and value capture, and the ability to positively influence the trilemma of energy and resources security, natural security and economic security.

Negotiaction is familiar with major energy and resource assets – developed and undeveloped – across and beyond Australia and we routinely factor keen global interest in these opportunities in our assessments.

Each case we commit to is tailored to suit our clients’ interests and we typically enter into commercial arrangements that align our mutual interests and facilitate sharing of risks and rewards.

By nature of our activities, perceived or real conflicts of interest arise – and Negotiaction routinely enters into arrangements to prevent and actively avoid these conflicts.

Our strategy capability is focused on advancing our clients’ and strategic partners’ interests in securing major projects and significant market opportunities in energy and resources domains. Forming a high-level view is not enough – our growth-oriented strategies encompass broad industries and specific projects, and are informed by both qualitative and quantitative facts at these levels.

We explore existing and emerging opportunities in light of tailored strategic concepts and frameworks. Often this includes exploring market uncertainties, and analysing the games being played by other organisations, particularly those that compete with our clients.

Informed by our industry knowledge we build, test and refine strategy and opportunity-specific models that are designed to handle real world uncertainty and complexity. These models enable us to form views on how value could be best created and captured, and articulate where potential does and does not lie.

We create plans to realise this potential ... and execute these plans with our clients and strategic partners.

Our opportunity-focused pursuits involve us assisting our clients to make informed decisions in order to realise significant upside potential and manage very real downside risks. Whether markets are mature or emerging, stable or in flux, onshore or offshore, in almost all cases the stakes are extremely high.

While perfect prediction is impossible, pragmatic anticipation of uncertain events and the moves of our clients' competitors enable Negotiaction to assist our clients to make decisions and cultivate positions that enable them to quickly react to unfolding events, as well as take actions that shape the future in their favour.

There is significant value in creating flexibility for our clients, and we structure and cultivate strategic options critical for growth, learning, or risk management.

We acknowledge without fear or favour that energy and resource markets are increasingly shaped by the significant few. Accordingly, we channel our resources and the resources of our clients and collaborators to engaging meaningfully with these influential nodes as opposed to wasting effort on market followers. In all cases our engagement efforts are underpinned by a strong and respectful understanding of our clients' target organisations (and their key decision makers and influencers) and insights into the environments in which they operate in.

As a critical part of pursuing and securing major projects and market opportunities, we guide negotiations that enable our clients to design and execute meaningful strategies. These strategies typically encompass clusters of other organisations.

In all cases we advance our clients’ interests by ensuring they are positioned to create value and capture a fair share of the value created.

Negotiaction was founded in 1998. We are based in Melbourne, Australia and are actively involved in major energy and resources projects across our country. Negotiaction’s activities extend into select global markets, and our primary offshore interests encompass India and China.