Team size: 16 persons

What are the most significant cases, projects or transactions that you and your legal team have recently been involved in?

Full life cycle legal support to three key areas. Firstly, the formation of the first PERE fund raised in China with major insurance companies as LPs, and its downstream acquisition. Secondly, the formation of the first flag ship fund raised in China with a prominent international insurance company as the LP, and its first PERE sub fund with downstream acquisition. Thirdly, the Successful issuance of C-Reit, which is the first retailing infrastructure C-Reit with foreign sponsor.  

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

Capitaland Group went through a pivotal transformation around 2021, taking all development business private (as current Capitaland Development), and keeping assets management (global private fund, public fund/ reits, assets operation and lodging) as current Capitaland Investment listing on Singapore Exchange. I fully supported the process of this transformation, built from scratch China legal team focusing on legal support for asset management business, and combined the new team and team legacy of assets operation, making sure of the synergy of the whole team and pushing for team members’ potential to break the expertise and know-how boundaries. Nowadays, Capitaland Investment has become one of the most prominent PERE fund manager, public reits manager and global assets manager in Aisa and of the whole world, and China legal team is one of the key impactor in this organisation.

Based on your experiences in the past year, are there any trends in the legal or business world that you are keeping an eye on that you think other in-house lawyers should be mindful of?

There are two main trends I would like to mention.

Firstly, the In-house legal team is becoming and is expected to become a close and trusted partner with our business teams like investment and fund teams. We must provide advice beyond pure legal profession. We need to fully understand the logic and rationale of our own business and provide insights of market standards and best practice. General counsel with her legal team is influencing behaviours inside the organization, impacting decision making and changing the business culture.

Secondly, our mandate to external counsel is changing – we are pushing them to change their service model and lever their advising standards. Transactional lawyers can no longer be lofty on their wall-street/ VC model documentation. They have to talk to their litigation team to ensure clauses can be actually supported by a real tribunal. Anti-trust and compliance counsel can no-longer sit alone in Beijing talking to deal side once or twice and sweep 8 weeks for a filing. They have to be flexible and adapt to help client to consummate the deal while compliance is fulfilled.

What is a cause, business or otherwise, that you are passionate about? Why is this?  

The next greatest company not only selling products to the world, but promoting its culture and operation philosophy global-wise will be from Aisa, particularly from a base of China or China related domicile.  This will happen naturally following the economy growth cycle itself, but still needs painstaking efforts by outstanding business leaders, and impactors like GCs.