Just 5 years ago, Virgin Australia was grounded...

The pandemic wiped out travel. The nation’s second-largest airline collapsed into administration. US private equity firm Bain Capital stepped in to buy the airline for $3.5 billion.

Now, Virgin is back in the air.

With a $2.3 billion valuation, it’s the biggest IPO in 2025.

Here’s how Gilbert + Tobin brought Virgin back to market.

Gilbert + Tobin wasn’t always the go-to law firm for all things Virgin.

Back in 2019, Virgin Australia turned to Herbert Smith Freehills as its corporate advisor on a series of note issuances.

But it was Deloitte — Virgin’s Administrators — that called in Clayton Utz during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

The top-tier firm helped stitch together one of the most complex corporate rescues in Australia: a deal involving 10 separate deeds of company arrangements to transfer the business to Bain Capital, which had HSF on its side.

By June 2020, HSF and Clayton Utz were locked up in Clayton Utz’s Sydney office drafting the final terms of the sale. And on 26 June 2020, Virgin announced that Bain Capital was the new owner of the airline.

HSF and Clayton Utz were the taxiway that lifted Virgin from near collapse.

But it was G+T that secured the airline’s revival IPO mandate.

Fast forward to 2023, Virgin Australia is finally back in the black — its first profit in over a decade.

Bain Capital was considering cashing in.