About

In six years, Sheila Liang has built up leading Chinese internet provider Tencent’s specialist M&A and technology transaction teams from scratch. After having no specialist transactional lawyers when she arrived, Liang now leads 14 lawyers across the two distinct strands.‘I have been coaching the two teams into the most sophisticated teams with the highest legal skill and competency compared with peer companies, I believe,’ she says, adding: ‘The two teams are very strong and truly international’. Liang’s arrival marked a period of growth and international activity for the company, which had previously focused on domestic transactions and, at that time, was doing very few M&A deals at all. Since then, the M&A team has handled hundreds of transactions involving billions of dollars. These included Tencent’s award-winning Sogou-Soso deal, which created the “Sogou Model”; an entirely new deal-structuring design. Operating internationally within a unique market like China remains a major appeal of the role for Liang from both a legal and a business perspective: ‘I very much enjoy serving as a bridge between international practice and domestic habit, between western cultural and Chinese cultural’. When asked about the biggest challenges of her role, Liang points to the constant tension between business needs and risk control: ‘Which is the forever topic.’