Drawing upon its excellent relationships with many bulge bracket banks, A&O Shearman is best-known for its underwriter/arranger work facilitating a range of ECM work for Chinese issuers including IPOs, listings, and follow-ons such as rights issues and block trades. As well as handling Hong Kong-related work, including a considerable amount of work within the biotech space (under Chapter 18A rules), the firm has been very successful in securing both issuer and underwriter mandates on international issuances facilitated by the China-Switzerland stock connect program which opened up in July 2022. Jonathan Hsui has been pivotal to this success and has handled a raft of GDR offerings on the SIX Swiss Exchange, work which he combines with a vibrant HKEX practice. Lina Lee is also central to the team’s success on the transactional side, as well as handling regulatory compliance-related work for several major listed companies across different industries. The team was also strengthened at the beginning of 2023 by the arrival of Gilbert Li and Iris Yeung from Linklaters, both of whom add core ECM expertise, as well as on public M&A. The team now added Kyungwon Lee, Wanda Woo and Leo Wong as a result of the A&O and Shearman & Sterling merger in May 2024.
Testimonials
Collated independently by Legal 500 research team.
- ‘The energetic team has a proactive working attitude.’
- ‘Wanda Woo has superb drafting skills and is able to understand the commercial rationale of the issuer’s business while striking a a balance between regulatory expectation and marketing needs of the issuers.’
Key clients
- Shandong Boan Biotechnology Co., Ltd
- Huatai Financial Holdings (Hong Kong) Limited
Work highlights
- Advised Shandong Boan Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (Boan Biotech) on the spin-off from Luye Pharma Group and a separate listing of the H Shares of Boan Biotech on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
- Advised the sole global co-ordinator and sole bookrunner Huatai Financial Holdings (Hong Kong) Limited on Hangzhou Great Star Industrial Co. Ltd.’s global depositary receipts (GDR) offering and listing on the SIX Swiss Exchange.