About

As Group Head of Legal at CITIC CLSA, Marco oversees the legal function globally, covering all 14 jurisdictions where CLSA has offices.

In addition to leading the Legal Team at CITIC CLSA, Marco has been appointed as an executive director of a HKEX Main Board listed company, CLSA Premium Limited. Marco is helping to transition the company from a financial institution into a healthcare company.

Given the global footprint of CITIC CLSA, the lawyers in Hong Kong (which is the headquarter offshore) are required to manage a range of issues arising from the Bank Holding Company Act, Volcker Rules, AIFMD (Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive), and other US and EU regulations. Furthermore, given CITIC CLSA’s parent is CITIC Securities, there is also the CSRC (China Securities Regulatory Commission) angle. This makes the job more challenging but rewarding for our lawyers.

Our team covers all business lines at CITIC CLSA, including Equities, Derivatives, Fixed Income, Investment Banking, Asset Management, Private Equity, Commodities, Futures, Fund Administration and Wealth Management.  Whilst our lawyers in Hong Kong have a global mandate, they also work with our regional lawyers based in some of our key jurisdictions.

Whilst the Firm has already been operating in many key jurisdictions (such as New York and London) for decades, we are in the process of scaling up those offices to provide more services, whilst at the same time working on opening offices in new jurisdictions (such as Germany, the Middle East and Canada).

Given the significant development of Legal Tech, we are also in the process of providing more automated solutions to our lawyers to assist with documentation and building an engine for legal knowhow. Utilising the latest technology would allow our lawyers to be more efficient and deliver a more consistent product to our businesses.

Geopolitical risk appears prominently in all major decision making these days.  The risk can manifest in different shapes and forms, such as data law, privacy law, national security law, foreign investment law, sanctions law, and others.  Given the importance of this, Marco’s view is that awareness and education of these issues at the Firm is key, especially since most people are not historically accustomed to thinking of these issues when making business decisions.   To achieve this, Marco has ensured that: comprehensive training is provided across the Firm, from top to bottom, so that hopefully, this gets factored into their decision making; given our lawyers would typically be across all key transactions and decisions of the Firm, our lawyers are gatekeepers and flag these issues when they see them; and bringing in external consultant when issues are particularly complex.