What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

This year, Asia Clean Capital Vietnam (ACCV) has received an investment from SUSI Partners’ Asia Energy Transition Fund (SAETF) – a fund of SUSI Partners – a Swiss fund manager specialised in sustainable energy infrastructure investments with €1.9bn in capital commitments from institutional investors. The investment will support ACCV’s development of clean energy projects across Vietnam. This deal also helps ACCV to be awarded for ‘Best Performing Project of the Year: Financial Performance’ at Solar Assets Excellence Awards 2023 at Singapore.

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

We are planning to apply AI on our works (including AI translation tool because we need high quality translation of many Vietnamese documents for our operation and investment).

How do you see the general counsel role evolving in Vietnam over the next five-ten years?

The general counsel role is likely to become increasingly important in Vietnam because many international investors and funds intend to rely more and more on local advice from the general counsel in Vietnam, assisting with international law firms. The general counsel in Vietnam will also lead the deal structure and make important decisions for proceeding the deal (and even selecting the law firms to work in the deals).

What are some of the main trends impacting your industry in Vietnam?

Our renewable energy section has experienced an M&A boom, which is possibly projected to continue in the next few years. This trend is an opportunity for the buyer as ACCV, however also a challenge with uncertain legal framework of frontier market as Vietnam which shall require comprehensive legal due diligence.