About

The head of legal and compliance for ARA Private funds at ARA Asset Management, Mark Hwang considers himself extremely fortunate to be part of a ‘high calibre and driven team’, which ‘regularly overcomes seemingly impossible challenges’. He sees the tasks of motivating his team to have confidence in its own abilities and to take full ownership of its work to be a key part of his job, and always tries to pass on the important lessons he received during the course of a varied and highly successful legal career spanning over two decades. Beginning his career as a deputy public prosecutor and state counsel for the Attorney General’s Chambers of the Criminal Justice Division of Singapore in 1996, he then moved on to a highly rewarding period in private practice, during which he operated as a partner for Allen & Gledhill of Singapore in their financial services division and a senior associate with the corporate department of Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker in Hong Kong. From there, he moved into investment banking with Morgan Stanley and then in-house legal work and business development with a family office before taking on his current role in March 2017. He has been extremely busy in terms of project work ever since, including numerous property acquisitions and disposals across Asia Pacific and the ongoing fund-raise for ARA Private Fund’s latest iteration of its commingled value-add fund, which is targeting up to US$1bn of commitments. These are the most recent chapters in a highly eventful career that has allowed Hwang the opportunity to reflect on what makes a good in-house counsel. ‘An in-house counsel’s work is 80% about practicing the law and 20% about “Others”. For me, the latter includes things like proffering wise counsel, conducting oneself with integrity, having commercial awareness, and sharing a belief in the organisation’s mission. That 20% to me is dispositive of the success and enjoyment of one’s career as in-house counsel’, he concludes.