About

CIMB’s group legal head, Chee Fei Meng, is highly respected and praised by private practice lawyers and industry peers. Recognised as an exceptional leader and a central part of CIMB, Chee Fei Meng has been key to the growth of this relatively young organisation that has nonetheless grown very fast regionally, achieving the status of a universal bank franchise in a short period of time. Chee Fei Meng has added value to the business by building a legal department from the ground up. Peers have highlighted her dedication to building the skillset of her team members to be on par with the best in-house teams within international investment banks and the acclaimed legal teams of larger players in Asean and globally. It is to this end, that under her leadership, and with the empowerment and support of CIMB’s system, the team has been nominated for a number of awards across the region. In 2014 they won banking and financial in-house team of the year and Malaysia in-house team of the year. When Chee Fei Meng joined the team seven years ago, she set about making significant changes to the way CIMB Group’s legal function was run. She conceded that at the time bankers didn’t consider them an integral part of the organisation, something which she continuously works towards changing: ‘We gained in-depth knowledge on every country which is quite an achievement. When I first started legal was solely operational but now they are considered business partners and within a year we got ourselves nominated for a few awards’. Working in such a rapidly-evolving region with countries that are less conservative about risk, Chee Fei Meng has had to adapt to these different levels of sophistication by training the in-house legal team to review documentation meticulously, reducing the level of dependency on external counsels. Chee Fei Meng has also worked towards creating key specialisms within the team, which has helped in adding more value and creating greater collaboration with the banking and operations arms of the business.