About

SSG is an alternative asset manager focused on investing in credit and special situations with over US$5bn assets under management. Richard Yee is the managing director and general counsel leading a legal team of six members. According to a nominator, ‘Yee oversees a complex array of legal issues relating to fund formation, investor relations, acquisitions and divestitures across all SSG’s various funds’. The senior members of the team include Praveen Thomas and Arpan Chowdhury who mainly cover the firm’s investments in India, and Rachel Lao who deals with the firm’s investments outside of India. Members of the legal team at SSG are all able to act as deal counsels responsible for looking after investments from the beginning to the end, working either individually or collaboratively based on the nature of the transaction. Because of the investment strategies of the firm, the transactions typically involve analysing and implementing both offshore and onshore legal strategies tailored to a specific credit situation. As each situation is unique and typically time sensitive, most members of the legal team are senior professionals, working together with senior investment team members to execute a broad spectrum of debt and equity transactions across different jurisdictions throughout Asia. Having received training from top-tier international and local law firms and financial institutions, the team members are also fluent in multiple Asian languages and have a deep understanding of local laws and customs. SSG’s legal capability gives the firm a competitive advantage, particularly given the firm’s special situation investment focus in multiple Asian jurisdictions. ‘SSG’s legal team is always at the forefront of deals involved in strategy, structuring, documentation, negotiation, risk assessment, closing and asset management phrases’, Yee states. The team has doubled in size over the last two years. ‘With the increasing amount of work and deal flow within our firm, we have brought on additional members particularly to cover complex geographies in more depth, such as India and China. Despite the firm becoming more busy and complex than ever, we have been able to maintain the quality of coverage across jurisdictions’, Yee says.