About

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last two years?

First, NIO’s successful listing on the NYSE. As the general counsel, I led NIO’s in-house team to support the whole process of NIO’s successful listing on the NYSE in September 2018. Throughout the project, NIO’s legal team worked on a 24-7 schedule, closely collaborated with investment banks and external counsels at each single stage of the process and handled all documentation preparations by promptly providing information, comments, and feedbacks in a timeless and seamless fashion. The whole process – from kick-off to the successful listing took only six months in total with the financing amount reaching about US$1.15bn. The NIO legal team’s extraordinary dedication has greatly contributed to the success of NIO’s listing on the NYSE. Second, the successful offering of convertible bonds on NYSE. As the general counsel, I led NIO’s in-house legal team to assist the company in its successful offering of convertible bonds on the NYSE in early 2019. As capital is of vital importance to the survival and daily operation of a start-up company, NIO’s legal team, together with the finance team, took the challenges and successfully completed the project and raised about US$650m within three weeks. Such a project usually takes about three months to complete from project kick-off to completion. The capital raised provided timely support to NIO’s business operation.

What “legal tech” products do you currently utilise, and do you foresee implementing more of these in the near future?

NIO stands in a new industry that requires quick reactions and responses to address real world challenges and issues. As the general counsel, I place exceptional importance on continuous knowledge learning and the promotion of “legal tech” usage in daily work. For example, we use PUKLaw, an online legal research service, to search for the latest laws, regulations, and court decisions to address work related questions and issues. Further, we have introduced EverPro, an online platform which provides comprehensive trainings on the hottest legal topics, for our counsels to keep improving their legal knowledge and skills. For our IP work, we use PatSnap and PointerBP to keep track of NIO’s latest IP filings and case statuses. In addition, we are also in the process of searching for online or digital service providers who provide global documentation archival and maintenance solutions with an aim to build up NIO’s online documentation library.

Have any new laws, regulations or judicial decisions greatly impacted your company’s business or your legal practice?

Yes. As the automotive industry and electrical vehicle industry are highly regulated, any changes in law will greatly impact on industry players’ strategies, business models and even daily operations, the same applies to NIO.

For example, in 2018, the PRC government promulgated some new regulations which directly increased the threshold and added new conditions for a new electrical car maker to obtain manufacturing licences and casted some new limitations on provincial governments’ authority to approve new manufacturing licences while on the other hand, also offered some flexibility to electrical vehicle makers to obtain manufacturing licences. These regulations greatly impacted on NIO’s strategy and plan as to when and how NIO can apply and obtain a manufacturing license. As a pioneer in the electrical vehicle industry, NIO has to pay great attention to the latest developments of laws in the countries and territories where it conducts its business, and this requires the legal function to be at the frontline of understanding such regulatory changes, bringing it back to the business, and jointly analysing the impacts to the business together with the company’s management team, thus to formulate, change, and switch the company’s strategies to comply with and accommodate such regulatory changes. NIO’s legal team has been keeping abreast of the newest regulatory changes in the countries and territories where we operate and has safeguarded the company’s fast growing business in the past five years.

What do you feel are the most effective techniques for getting the most out of external counsel, in terms of how to instruct them?

First, it’s important to make sure that external counsels understand your own organisational objectives and business, such as the company’s strategic plans, business objectives, and risk tolerance, as well as its project-based objectives, background, and timeline, before commencing any engagement. This allows you to build up a long term mutual understanding between in-house teams and external teams, and further helps you save costs in terms of time and communication and can greatly enhance work efficiency.

Second, it’s also crucial to set up reasonable expectations as early as you can by making the counsels understand the level of quality that you expect. Good communication and the exchange of ideas in this regard would benefit the work relationship in the long run. Lastly, it’s vital to have time for post-performance feedback. The often-overlooked feedback phase is a critical element of managing outside counsels effectively because it can improve performance on future engagements and further enhance the work efficiency between the in-house team and external counsels, as well as between the in-house team and the business.

How do you feel in-house legal leaders can successfully introduce and implement a culture within a legal department?

I personally think that having mutual trust, delegation of authority, accountability of responsibilities, and strong support for each other when facing challenges and obstacles are the most important to establish for a highly efficient, fast-moving, and promptly-responding team culture.

What would you say are the unique qualities required to be successful as an in-house lawyer in your industry?

Long term vision of the industry and business and positive thinking when facing challenges and obstacles; Open-mindedness, flexibility and the embracement of constant changes in the regulatory, business as well as corporate environment; Diligence and working hard to allow you to respond promptly to business needs and requirements.