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Hong Kong Teams 2019

Emperor Group

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Hong Kong Teams 2019

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Emperor Group

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Emperor Group is a diversified group of companies with six listed companies and five non-listed businesses in Hong Kong. While the main focus of the Group remains in Hong Kong, it has set its footprint in mainland China, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore and London. Valda Chan is the group general counsel, leading the legal and secretarial department that comprises 60 staff in two divisions, namely the legal division of 50 staff and company secretarial division of 10 staff. The legal team at the group level provides all necessary legal support and supervision, while the legal teams at business unit level focus mainly on legal matters arising from day-to-day operations in respective business units. In addition, the legal team at the group level handles all the material mergers and acquisitions, trademarks and family trust matters as well as providing legal support to those business units that do not have a standalone legal team. The company secretarial team provides all required company secretarial work for all corporate entities within the Group in pursuance of a high standard of corporate governance. The department advises the Group’s 11 business units on a comprehensive range of matters and has been highly praised by internal clients, being described as ‘instrumental in advising the legal affairs of the Group’ as well as ‘well respected and recognised for its professionalism and strong business acumen’. Having joined the Group in 2017, Chan brought major changes to the legal team. For decades, the legal team structure operated on a more fragmented basis, with legal staff at each business unit working almost separately from each other. Last year, the structure between the legal team at group level and those at business level was reinstated by way of a clear delineation of workflow and logistics, and a more structured reporting system, enhancing the department’s performance. The department has also been involved in a number of significant projects and transactions in the past two years. For example, the team assisted in the private placement of Emperor Capital Group for issuance of bonds in aggregate of HK$1.7bn. Talking about her team ethos, Chan states: ‘We take pride in how we run our department as if we were an internal law firm, supporting the Group with an unparalleled understanding of the company’s culture and business strategies; the business reality and key issues faced by each of our 11 business units’. ‘We handle over 90% of the legal work internally. In principal, we only seek external counsel support for conveyancing, litigation, bank financing (as requested by banks) and offshore matters. This approach gives us more control over the process and quality of our work. As we work closely with business units, this approach also works to ensure that the support provided to each of the Group’s business units is tailored and fully in line with the business strategies and objectives of the Group’, she explains.

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