About

CIMB’s award-winning group legal head Chee Fei Meng is highly respected not only in her own organisation, but across the industry as a whole. ‘CIMB is relatively young in terms of having achieved the status of a universal bank franchise and has grown very fast regionally in a short period of time,’ she says. ‘Building it from the ground up, the legal team is constantly being challenged to “think outside the box”, ensure smooth execution of deals and manage the risks effectively at the same time.’ One of the greatest challenges, Fei Meng believes, is raising the legal team in CIMB’s profile to be recognised alongside the acclaimed legal teams of larger players in Asean and globally. For some, she has already achieved this. ‘Fei Meng has very successfully raised the skill levels of her investment banking legal team to be on par with the best in-house legal teams in the international investment banks,’ Adrian Chee Meng Yang at Adnan Sundra & Low says. Another private practice source points to Fei Meng’s technical expertise: ‘She is well known for her strong capabilities in the area of equity capital markets’. When Fei Meng joined the team five years ago, she set about making significant changes to the way CIMB Group’s legal function was run. ‘I have transformed legal to be more transaction-based in certain areas, instead of serving merely as an advisory function,’ she says. ‘In short, we now strive to support the business from the start of the structuring to settling, through to completing or closing the deal.’ Fei Meng has trained CIMB’s in-house legal team to review documentation in its entirety, hence reducing the level of dependency on external counsels to spot issues. ‘In order to ensure accuracy of the information and fair counsel, many times, if not all the time, it is proven that a second “set of eyes” helps tremendously to ensure that all angles are covered.’ Such processes and resources have been duly put in place under Fei Meng’s leadership. Fei Meng has also worked towards creating key specialisms within the team, which has helped in adding more value and creating greater collaboration with the banking and operations arms of the business. ‘I enjoy working closely with the bankers and finding solutions to issues that arise daily,’ she says. ‘Seeing a deal through to successful completion after much hard work brings great satisfaction indeed!’