Morrison Foerster

Private Funds; Private Equity Investments + Buyouts; Investment Management

Deputy Chair of Global Private Funds Group

Serena represents global and regional fund managers and institutional investors in the formation of private equity, private credit and real estate funds. Her practice focuses on both offshore funds (including the Cayman Islands, BVI, Delaware, Luxembourg, Singapore, and Hong Kong) and RMB funds (including QFLP and QDLP funds). She is the Deputy Chair of the firm’s Global Private Funds Group and Chair of Greater China Private Funds practice.

Serena advises fund managers on the formation of an array of private equity funds (including buyout, growth capital, venture capital, and co-investment funds) and private credit funds across a wide range of sectors, including consumer, financial services, healthcare, technologies, TMT, and travel/leisure. Serena’s representative private equity fund manager clients include Affirma Capital, Ascendent Capital Partners, Ally Bridge Group, CBC Group, Fosun, GLP, Hony Capital, Junson Capital, KHL Capital, Kowloon Nights, Morgan Stanley Private Equity Asia, Makers, ORIX Asia Capital, Ping An Overseas Holdings, Sailing Capital, SoftBank Ventures Asia, and Taiwania Capital.

Serena advises on real estate fund managers on the formation of real estate funds and joint ventures with experience across many asset classes, including offices, logistics, industrial parks, residential, hospitality, and retail. Serena’s representative real estate fund manager clients include BHG, GLP, Hony Capital, and Sino-Ocean Capital.

Serena’s diverse practice also encompasses advising on fund secondaries transactions such as GP-led restructuring, continuation funds, stapled secondaries, and secondary purchases of limited partner interests. In addition, Serena frequently advises fund managers on arrangements among principals, carried interest plans, and employee co-investments, regulatory and compliance matters, and internal governance matters. She also has deep experience of fund of funds, funds-of-one, separate accounts, and family offices.

In addition, Serena regularly represents institutional investors in investments in private investment funds, including insurance companies, family offices, banks, and asset management firms.  Serena’s representative institutional investor clients include China Ping An, China Life, CMB, FWD, ICBCI, Great Wall, The Wharf Holdings, and Wheelock.

Year after year, Serena is widely acknowledged by legal directories as one of the leading private funds partners in Asia. Recent recognition includes being ranked as a leading partner by Chambers Global (2019-2024), Chambers Asia-Pacific (2019-2021), Chambers Greater China (2022-2024), and Legal 500 Asia Pacific (2020-2024). She was featured in ALB’s “Asia’s 40 Under 40” list of the most accomplished young lawyers in 2018. Under Serena’s leadership, the Private Funds Team in Asia has advised Asia-based GPs on more than 30 fund formation transactions (raising in excess of US$25 billion), and was shortlisted for the 2021 PEI Awards for Asia Law Firm of the Year in the Fund Formation category.

Serena has been recognized by clients as a “highly diligent and talented” practitioner with “excellent professional knowledge and a strong commercial sense” and their “go-to lawyer for fund formation work that has a Chinese component.” Clients highlighted her as “an ideal partner” who “understands the differences between offshore funds and RMB funds and the differences between international investors and Chinese investors” and “has the outstanding ability to design optimal structures, bridge gaps, and find solutions.”

Serena is a Registered Foreign Lawyer with the Law Society of Hong Kong. She has over 15 years of experience practicing law in New York and China.

Fudan University, LL.B.

Fudan University, LL.M.

Harvard Law School, LL.M.