Speakers

Event

Title:: Mergers and Acquisitions: Asian Companies Going Global
When:: 14.02.2009 13.00 h - 14.30 h
Category:: Panels

Description

A merger or acquisition is one of the most transformative undertakings in the life of a firm. The sustainability of such an undertaking is a matter of great importance over the long-term. M&A in Asia is going through a period of rapid change, from increased activity in Japan, to continued growth in China, to new developments in India, to the increase in private equity activity. The nature of the current transformations in Asian M&A and the long-term sustainability of today's M&A will affect the worldwide market for years to come. This panel will examine the future for the global presence of Asian companies as well as the difficulties and solutions this would entail, especially given the current economic condition.

Howard Chao

Partner, O'Melveny & Myers LLP

Howard Chao is the partner in charge of O'Melveny's Asia Practice. During his 29 years with the Firm he has been engaged in a broad variety of transactional matters. He was responsible for establishing our China offices, and was stationed in our Shanghai office for many years. He is currently engaged in a general corporate practice, with an emphasis on cross-border and Asia matters.

Howard is a recognized authority on China and has extensive experience advising clients on China matters. He has advised clients from many sectors in connection with their investments and operations in Asia. More recently, Howard has been assisting Chinese companies with their outbound investment transactions.

In the United States, Howard has advised clients in connection with a variety of transactional matters, including venture investments, corporate finance, and M&A.

Jack Lange

Partner, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP

Jack Lange is a partner in the Corporate Department, based in the firm's Hong Kong office.
Mr. Lange is a leading practitioner in the fields of private equity and mergers and acquisitions in Asia. He regularly represents major private equity funds in connection with precedent-setting transactions in the Asian region, including KKR in its investment in Tianrui Cement; Morgan Stanley in its investment in China Mengniu Dairy and numerous other private equity investments in Asia; The Carlyle Group in its bid for ASE, its acquisition of a controlling interest in Ta Chong Bank and other investments in Greater China; Oaktree Capital in its acquisition of Fu Sheng Industrial Co., the first LBO of a listed company in Taiwan; and Olympus Capital in its investment in China Zhongwang Holdings.

Ken Tsang

Managing Director, Hina Group

Mr. Ken Tsang is a co-founder of The Hina Group, a leading China focused investment bank and private equity firm with 60 professionals across offices in the US, China and Singapore. The Hina Group has advised on over 35 transactions valued at over $2 billion over the last 3 years. Before establishing Hina, Mr. Tsang was at Credit Suisse First Boston, where he launched and headed up the Technology Group Investment Banking division for several key sectors in Asia. During his tenure, CSFB was ranked "Best Technology Team" by Finance Asia. Prior to forming the CSFB Asia Technology Group, Mr. Tsang was part of CSFB's M&A Group. Before joining CSFB, Mr. Tsang was at PWC and Arthur Andersen.

Mr. Tsang holds an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and a BA (Honors) from the University of Waterloo, Canada. He is also a CFA charter-holder and a Chartered Accountant from Canada.

Mark Plotkin

Partner, Covington & Burling LLP

Mark Plotkin, a partner resident in the Washington, DC office of Covington & Burling LLP, manages the Firm's practice before the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS; he also handles domestic and cross-border financial services regulatory matters. He is a leader in the field of national security, information technology and financial services regulation. Mr. Plotkin's experience includes negotiating several of the most significant, complex and sensitive national security agreements with the U.S. government in recent years.

Among other matters, Mr. Plotkin represented IBM Corporation before CFIUS in connection with the $1.75 billion sale of the company's PC division to Lenovo Group of China, which transaction at the time involved the largest Chinese investment in the United States to date and drew close scrutiny from CFIUS. He also represented Global Crossing before CFIUS in connection with the proposed investment by Hutchison Whampoa and Singapore Technologies Telemedia (STT), a contentious matter in which Mr. Plotkin successfully negotiated a landmark security agreement that permitted Global Crossing to be acquired by STT; the so-called "Global Crossing agreement" is generally acknowledged as the seminal post-9/11 template for national security agreements entered into by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security in connection with foreign direct investments in the United States. Mr. Plotkin recently advised Temasek Holdings of Singapore in connection with its multi-billion dollar investment in Merrill Lynch.

Eric Talley (Moderator)

Professor & Co-Director, Berkeley Center of Law, Business and the Economy

Eric Talley is a leading authority on corporate law, and law and economics. In addition to teaching corporate law, he serves as faculty co-director of Boalt's Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy. He joined the faculty in 2006.

Talley was previously at University of Southern California Law School from 1995 to 2005. He held the Theodore and Ivadelle Johnson Chair in Law and Business in 2005, having become a full professor in 2000. Talley led two of the law school's respected research centers, and was director both at the USC Center in Law, Economics and Organization and the USC/Caltech Olin Center for the Study of Law and Rational Choice from 2002 to 2004.

Talley has also taught both law and economics classes at Georgetown Law Center, the California Institute of Technology, the RAND Graduate School and Stanford University.

Talley has served as senior economist at the RAND Corporation's Institute for Civil Justice, as director of the LRN-RAND Center for the Study of Corporate Ethics, Governance and Law, and as interim director of the RAND-Kauffman Foundation Center for the Study of Small Business Litigation and Regulation.