About

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

First, I would mention the BAIC BJEV listing project. We assisted BAIC BJEV, a unicorn subsidiary of BAIC Group, to close round A and round B funding of up to nearly ¥20bn, and to complete the asset reorganisation and listing, which made it China’s first listed NEV maker. Second, our work on the Daimler share acquisition project was notable, during which we assisted BAIC Group to acquire 5% of shares in Daimler. The TRIMET stake acquisition project, in which we assisted Bohai Automobile, a subsidiary of BAIC Group, to acquire a 75% stake in TRIMET, a German company, for €61.5m was also an extremely successful project for us. Finally, the Beijing Jiali Hengde property enforcement case saw us successfully help the company claim back damages that amount to ¥200m, and was another extremely important company endeavour.

In what ways do you see the in-house legal role evolving in your region over the next few years?

In the future, in-house legal counsel will be more and more important, especially those in the large groups of the automobile industry. They are no longer limited to traditional work such as assisting major projects, resolving litigation and arbitration, and contract review. They will pay more attention to risk control, compliance management, the construction of the legal supervision system, and further strengthening the management of intellectual property rights. Moreover, a comprehensive mechanism combining risk prevention control, compliance management and legal supervision shall be established and improved. Such a mechanism shall be supervised by the head of the company, led by the general counsel (chief compliance officer), cooperated by all other business departments, and implemented by the legal and compliance department.

BAIC Group established the compliance committee in 2017 and you were appointed as the chief compliance officer, how do you manage this new role?

Since being appointed as the chief compliance officer of BAIC Group in 2017 I have been focusing on leading my team to improve the compliance management system of BAIC Group including its subsidiaries. Now, we have established a unified and advanced compliance management system applicable to the whole group after five years of exploration, innovation, continuous practice and summarisation along with the implementation of the actual work. I have also established a compliance management centre, implemented a group compliance management model with direct management, supplemented by reporting and recording management, and established various programmes, processes, forms, templates and guidelines. Supported by the compliance management information system, the BAIC Group compliance management system version 1.0 was also formed.

At present, in order to create the BAIC Group compliance management system version 2.0, BAIC Group is further improving and optimising the compliance management organisation, policies, operation mechanism and culture. With two years’ effort, our goal is to build a complete and effective compliance management system with overall coverage, deep integration, and continuous and stable operation by advocating and practicing the compliance concept based around our watchwords of everywhere, everyone, everything and anytime. As well, we look to integrate a legal culture centred on upholding law, advocating morality, being knowledgeable and dedicated and taking effective measures.

What will be the main focus for the company in the next 12 months and how do you intend to assist with this?

The main focus of the company in the next 12 months is to deepen strategic transformation, accelerate the promotion of comprehensive new energy and intelligent networking, and continue high quality development. To this end, as the general counsel and chief compliance officer I will lead the group’s legal and compliance team to improve the legal and compliance management centre for matrix management, innovate legal services and support, and build BAIC Group’s legal and compliance management centre into a smart management centre, data centre, operation centre, benefit centre and knowledge centre, helping the business improve their soft power, global competitiveness and achieve high quality development.

What are the unique challenges, if any, of working in-house for a state owned enterprise in China?

In addition to general laws and regulations, the in-house legal (corporate lawyers) of state-owned enterprises should at least be familiar with the laws, regulations and policies related to state-owned assets management and automobile industry management, as well as enterprise management. State-owned enterprises have higher and higher requirements on the practicing ability of in-house legal (corporate lawyers) and more and more urgent demands on the construction of a compound legal talent team.

FOCUS ON… The general counsel and chief compliance officer is a manager who is fully responsible for the management of corporate legal and compliance affairs. He shoulders heavy duty of legal construction in enterprises, and shall safeguard the compliance of operations according to laws and regulations. The general counsel and chief compliance officer is a designer who shall make a good overall planning for the development of the legal and compliance profession and a great top-level design in accordance with the actual situation of the enterprise. The general counsel and chief compliance officer is a service provider. All legal and compliance management tasks need to serve the business operations and strategies, continuously create management benefits, and promote the company’s core competitiveness and value. The general counsel and chief compliance officer is also an innovator, who needs to innovate management models, work methods, and lead the team to self-innovate and make continuous progress, by combining the practice of the company and benchmarking such great practice of other international companies. The general counsel and chief compliance officer is both the artisan and bellwether. He should have a high level of legal and compliance professionalism, be able to deal with major and complicated legal and compliance problems, identify people with insight, cultivate good talents, and improve the overall practice ability and level of the team.