Career biography

Ms Zhang Hua graduated from the China University of Political Science and Law with both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in law. After graduation, she joined Deloitte, one of the international “Big Four” accounting firms, working in tax advisory. She became well versed in tax matters arising from day-to-day corporate operations and participated in a number of cross-border indirect equity transfer tax-planning projects. She later joined JunHe LLP, focusing primarily on corporate advisory and M&A. Her clients included multinational corporations, private equity funds and large state-owned enterprises, and she was recognised multiple times as a “Distinguished Lawyer” by the firm.

In 2016, she transitioned from private practice to an in-house role. During her time with the listing legal department at 360 Group and the investment department at Yixin, she was chiefly responsible for overseas investment and financing transactions, multiple fund investment projects, domestic M&A transactions and post-investment management. In several complex projects valued in the hundreds of millions of renminbi, she played a pivotal role as an internal strategic adviser.

Ms Zhang joined Huatai Innovation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Huatai Securities, in 2019. She successfully built the company’s compliance and risk-control team and developed it into a highly capable platform serving Huatai’s strategic investment activities. She has actively expanded the department’s remit from traditional equity-investment legal matters to broader areas including risk inspection, HR support and systems development. Under her leadership, the team has been deeply involved in Huatai’s strategic investment projects and has completed numerous high-profile, market-recognised milestone transactions. She has also led the firm’s compliance digitalisation efforts, introducing low-code platforms and robotic process automation to enhance efficiency.

Ms Zhang has been selected for the LexisNexis “40 Under 40” list and named among ALB’s “Top 15 General Counsel in China,” among other distinctions.