Connie Lee > Des Voeux Chambers > Hong Kong, Hong Kong > Lawyer Profile
Des Voeux Chambers Offices
38/F Gloucester Tower
The Landmark
Central, Hong Kong
Hong Kong
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Connie Lee
Career
Connie obtained double First Class Honours in both BSS (Govt. & Laws) and LLB at the University of Hong Kong as well as her master degree in Bachelor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford.
She was awarded the Bar Scholarship before she joined Chambers in 2009.
She has a broad practice in commercial litigation and arbitration including those with cross-border elements and with particular experience in company and insolvency matter. She regularly represents liquidators and trustees in bankruptcy in insolvency related proceedings.
She also advises on regulatory investigations and competition law matters. She has experience in representing directors of Listcos in disciplinary proceedings of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (both before the Listing Committee and the Listing Appeal Committee). She represented the SFC in the first trial for reversing an IPO (over a HK$1 billion buy-back offer) : SFC v. Hontex International Holdings CACV 128/2012 & HCMP630/2010. Recently, she is representing a Listco to stay and review the Insurance Authority’s decision to appoint managers to take over the largest taxis insurer in Hong Kong: Target Insurance (Holdings) Limited v. Insurance Authority ITA/1/2022.
Since 2016, she has been appointed to the Competition Commission’s Panel of External Counsel. She represented one of the parties in the first trial on market sharing and price-fixing as well as the first determination of penalty and its appeal in Hong Kong: Competition Commission v. W. Hing Construction Company Limited & Ors, CTEA 2/2017.
She is also the exclusive winner of Lexology’s Client Choice Award 2022 – Hong Kong – Competition.
Connie also sits as an arbitrator in both administered and ad hoc arbitrations. Since 2018, Connie has been regularly appointed to sit as a Deputy District Judge and Temporary Deputy Registrar of the High Court. Currently, she also serves on 6 administrative and quasi-judicial boards and tribunals.
Year of call
- 2009 (Hong Kong)
Languages
Cantonese, English, Putonghua
Memberships
Statutory Board/Tribunal, Advisory Panels
- Temporary Deputy Registrar of the High Court (2020 & 2022)
- Deputy District Judge (2018, 2019, 2021 & 2023)
- Member of the Appeal Panel (Estate Agents Ordinance) since January 2021
- Chairman of Appeal Boards (the Entertainment Special Effects Ordinance) from June 2020
- Chairman of the Appeal Panel (Housing) since February 2020
- Member of the Board of Review (Inland Revenue Ordinance) since January 2020
- Adjudicator of the Immigration Tribunal since October 2019
- Chairman of the Appeal Tribunal Panel (Buildings) since December 2018
- Panel of External Counsel to the Competition Commission since 2016
Arbitration Related
- Member of the HKIAC List of Arbitrators
- Member of the Panel of Arbitrators of NAC, SHIAC and SHAC
- Fellow, Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (FCIArb)
- Fellow, Arbitrators’ and Mediators’ Institute of New Zealand INC
- Member of the Executive Committee of the Women in Arbitration initiative (WIA) appointed under the auspices of the HKIAC since 2020
Hong Kong Bar Association
- Vice Chairman, Hong Kong Bar Association, Committee on Competition Law
- Member, Hong Kong Bar Association, Committee on Company Law (2018)
Education
- BCL(OXON)
- PCLL (HKU)
- LLB(HKU)
- BSS(Govt&Laws)(HKU)
Lawyer Rankings
Hong Kong Bar > Competition
(Leading Juniors)Connie Lee – Des Voeux Chambers ‘Connie is a first-class competition lawyer; she is excellent on technical matters and very pragmatic and strategic in her approach. She is really blazing a trail in competition law in Hong Kong and is a name to watch who is destined for great things.’
Des Voeux Chambers is ‘one of a very few number of sets that can handle competition law litigation from start to finish‘. Chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association’s Special Committee on Competition Law Catrina Lam frequently represents regulators and respondents from the telecoms, raw materials, banking and financial services, beauty and cosmetics, and real estate and construction sectors in competition proceedings. Lam is acting for the respondents in the case of Competition Commission v ATAL Building Services Engineering Ltd & Ors, which concerns one of the largest and high-value cartel cases brought by the Competition Commission against two major suppliers of air-conditioning services in Hong Kong regarding parent company liability. Connie Lee acted for a respondent in the case of Competition Commission v T.H Lee Book Company Limited & Ors, which concerned an enforcement action against three book publishers for price fixing, market sharing, and bid rigging when selling textbooks to secondary schools.
Hong Kong Bar > Commercial disputes
(Leading Juniors)Connie Lee – Des Voeux Chambers ‘Connie is no doubt a first-tier practitioner who impresses with her tactical, practical and commercial advice. In terms of advocacy, she is also a very effective advocate knowing how to push the right button, and it is very understandable why she is hotly sought-after, has very considerable trial and arbitration experience in her own right, and always punches above her weight.’