Team size: 30

Key team members: Zhou Jiaxing Joe (chief compliance officer and global head of legal and compliance), Esther Fung, Scarlet So, Tan Bin, Sam Wang, Haley Wu and Vincent Gao

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Led by Zhou Jiaxing Joe, the IBD legal team has played a crucial role in CICC’s Hong Kong and overseas business achievements. Despite challenging market conditions due to the impact of Covid-19 and the complex geo-political environment, CICC has managed to leverage our advantageous and strategic positions to better serve our internal clients in IBD business.

In 2022, CICC sponsored 38 Hong Kong IPOs, and completed four GDR listings on Swiss Stock Exchange and London Stock Exchange. CICC led a substantial number of high-profile IPO deals, including China Tourism Group Duty Free Corporation’s and Tianqi Lithium Co’ listings on HKEX – the largest travel retail IPO in the world and the largest ever IPO in lithium industry, respectively.

CICC also completed most of the dual primary and secondary listings of China Concept Stock Companies like Zhihu, Tuya, 360 DigiTech, Nio and KE Holdings in 2022. We also completed several remarkable GDR listings on the Swiss Stock Exchange.

Nearly 200 transactions – covering all types of debt securities, including vanilla bonds, MTN programs, regulatory capital instruments, perpetual and hybrid securities, asset-backed securities, ESG bonds, convertible bonds, and all kinds of liability management transactions – were executed. CICC also participated in 55 ESG bonds transactions in 2022, representing nearly $18bn in issue size.

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

Given the rapid changes in technology, society and market trends, in-house lawyers should have a broader vision above daily work.

Our legal team has developed various intelligent legal tech system like online contract review system and e-LC platform. The add-in function includes smart compare that assists our legal team in easily comparing the documents without incurring additional expenses. The streamline of OA functions also results in simplifying and expediting the approval process for all legal documents.

Apart from legal matters, has the team worked on other company initiatives?

Zhou Jiaxing Joe led the team in participating in a tree-planting activity. Joe is a board member of ASIFMA and a director of ICMA Asia, advising on cutting-edge topics. His team’s voices are highly influential to the whole industry.

Apart from our international hub in Hong Kong, we have overseas lawyers in that cover the IBD business related legal advisory work, as well as continuously engaging in international deals with IBD clients in other parts of the world.