About

Loo Hwee Fang has been group general counsel and company secretary of Yoma Strategic Holdings since 2013, prior to which she was a partner in the corporate department of Lee & Lee. She has put her past experiences to extremely good use for the company, establishing herself as a strong positive force within the organisation: ‘Through dealing with investors, it was clear that corporate governance was and remains a priority for investors. Hence, it was also an area of focus for me to continuously improve the system to meet the high standards of corporate governance. Yoma has since made a remarkable improvement in its rankings on the various governance and transparency indexes’. She was also involved in the spin-off of the company’s tourism business and the assets of Yoma into Catalist Board of the Singapore Exchange, Memories Group. ‘This was an exercise whereby we were subject to the scrutiny of the Singapore Exchange and the various advisers to ensure that the existing structures will be acceptable to meet the requirements of the Singapore Exchange’, she explains. The endeavour was successful: ‘Since the opening up of Myanmar, I believe that Memories Group is the only other Myanmar focused tourism entity to be listed on the Singapore Exchange after Yoma’. She has built a high-quality legal function to support her and the company in their endeavours. ‘There was only one legal counsel when I joined Yoma’, she explains, ‘and we now have a legal department comprising about ten local or expat counsel and legal executives. The group has grown considerably during this same time too, and we are well regarded as a preferred partner of many foreign investors looking to invest into Myanmar. The legal department plays a vital role in providing assurances to the foreign investors’.