About

Chief legal and compliance officer Johnny Chan heads the legal and compliance team of China Merchants Securities International and is supported by three Hong Kong qualified lawyers, who together with 10 other staff, supporting the team. With a geographic focus covering China and Hong Kong, the team regularly advises on a wide variety of deals, ranging from debt and equity investments, structured finance and underwriting of IPOs. ‘The team is known to be very sophisticated, resourceful, diligent and talented at proposing insights and solutions to complex issues which can arise in the course of their deals’, a nominator states. The legal sub-team, with three lawyers qualified in Hong Kong, support different business arms of the group, including corporate finance, securities, asset management and direct investment. The compliance team consists of a general compliance team and anti-money laundering team and, together with the control room, they provide compliance advice and control for the business. ‘With the increasing regulatory demand worldwide on financial institutions, the scope of work and responsibility of in-house counsel continued to grow with higher expectations. The boundary between the compliance and risk management functions has been blurred over the years. In-house legal department is expected to take up a more active role on working hand in hand with business units to think strategically and provide support for business direction even at the stage of planning’, Chan comments. Over the past three years, by acting as a major syndicate member either as sponsor or global coordinator, the company completed 41 renowned Hong Kong IPOs, including Meitu, WuXi Biologics and Meituan Dianping. Furthermore, the business actively participated in the US IPO of Qutoutiao, X Financial and Tiger Broker. The legal and compliance team is commended for significantly contributing to those deals and transactions which has resulted in the company being ranked third by the accumulative underwriting value over the past three years in Hong Kong market. Summing up the team’s culture, Chan states, ‘our team strives to be commercially sensitive with a flexible mind-set, with the ability to weigh risk and gauge challenges before they appear’.