About

COSCO SHIPPING Ports, headquartered in Hong Kong, is a subsidiary and listed company of China COSCO, owned by COSCO Group. It is mainly engaged in container terminal operations, container manufacturing and leasing, shipping agency and freight forwarding. General counsel and company secretary Michelle Hung leads a team of two lawyers and eight support staff, where five of them have a legal education background and four of them are chartered company secretaries. The legal department is formed by two teams, with one team responsible for handling legal matters including transactions in relation to M&As, financing arrangements and disclosure compliance management. The other team is responsible for handling the company secretarial matters, primarily ensuring compliance with the Hong Kong’s Listing Rules and companies ordinance compliance. ‘The legal department is responsible for handling the legal matters of corporate development, financing arrangements, business operations, corporate governance and compliance obligations of the company at the holding company level, in addition to the legal and company secretarial matters of subsidiaries and legal support to joint venture companies established in different jurisdictions’, Hung explains. In the last two years, with a view to enhance the development of professionalism of the legal team, more candidates with a legal education background have been recruited to the team. Recently, the legal team has been involved in a number of significant international deals and transactions, including the acquisition of a 60% equity interest in Terminales Portuarios Chancay in Peru and financing for the Khalifa Port Container Terminal Phase 2 in Abu Dhabi, in which the company holds 90% effective interest. Other examples of the team’s prolific work in this regard can be seen with the expansion of operations of the company’s joint venture COSCO-PSA Terminal in Singapore, the disposal of 15% equity interests in APM Terminals Zeebrugge in Belgium, the establishment of a joint operating alliance of the Kwai Tsing container terminals in Hong Kong and signing of master agreements in respect of continuing connected transactions of the company for a term of three years in accordance with Hong Kong Listing Rules. According to Hung, ‘the team strives for completion over excellence and perfection in every assignment’. With the number of on-going transactions of the company increasing exponentially over the past few years, the challenges faced by the legal team are becoming substantial and complex in terms of degree of compliance and technicality. ‘The legal team has adopted the best practice approach by researching and studying the execution processes and practices of some of the best practice organisations. Such approach enables the legal team to compare its critical execution processes against similar processes of some world class organisations and strive for development of professionalism’, she says.