28 Apr 2017

Rajah & Tann Singapore Expands Team With Six New Hires

Two prominent practitioners in ship finance and corporate practice and four lawyers, will be joining Rajah & Tann Singapore in a move by the firm to tap top talents for its growing regional practices.

Chua Choon King will come on board on 1 May 2017. He will be a Partner in the firm’s market leading Shipping and International Trade Practice. Rajah & Tann has one of the biggest, if not the biggest, shipping litigation teams in Singapore with about 30 lawyers. Mr Chua is joined by his colleagues, partners Jonathan Oon and Lim Chen Chen, and two associates.

In another significant appointment, Sandy Foo, a specialist corporate lawyer, will join as Partner from 1 May. Her appointment will be a boost to the firm’s Corporate and Transactional Practice, which includes mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and capital markets practices.

Managing Partner Lee Eng Beng, SC, said: “We welcome Choon King and Sandy to the firm. We are happy to be able to continue to draw the best and brightest in the profession, and that our regional network has been instrumental in appealing to lawyers in their prime who can advise on large-scale, complex cross-border transactions.”

Mr Chua said: “Rajah & Tann is the leader in the industry for shipping disputes. My team and I look forward to complementing them on the non-contentious side of the practice. Together, we believe we will be able to present an even more formidable proposition to clients.”

Mr Chua has been involved in a range of shipping-related transactions regionally. He has acted as lenders' counsel in a US$175 million loan to PetroVietnam Transportation Corporation to finance the acquisition of three tankers to be used at the Dung Quat Oil Refinery in Vietnam. He has also acted as Singapore counsel for State Bank of India on a billion dollar credit facility and for Fortis Bank on a US$450 million post-delivery financing to the Odfjell Group for chemical tankers.

Ms Foo has almost two decades of experience in corporate and financial services transactions, with particular focus on M&As. She has led numerous significant award winning M&A deals in the region, including Temasek’s acquisition and privatisation of SMRT, OCBC’s acquisition of ING’s private bank assets in Asia (now Bank of Singapore), Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology US$780 million general offer for STATS ChipPAC and the $13.1 billion cash offer to acquire Fraser And Neave by a consortium led by Overseas Union Enterprise. Ms Foo is also recognised and well regarded for her significant experience in project and acquisition financing.

Mr Chua and Ms Foo have also been lauded by independent legal media. In its latest 2017 edition, The Legal 500 – Asia Pacific described Mr Chua as ‘incisive and tirelessly determined’. Ms Foo has been recognised as a Leading Individual in Banking & Finance and Corporate M&A practices in both IFLR1000 and Chambers Asia Pacific. IFLR1000 praised Ms Foo as “an excellent technical lawyer but never takes overly technical points… and always works hard to find legally and commercially acceptable compromises, which is an essential part of being a good and experienced transactional lawyer."

Rajah & Tann Singapore is one of the largest full-service law firms in Singapore and South East Asia, with market leading practices in M&A, dispute resolution, international arbitration, shipping, insolvency, restructuring, capital markets, competition law, corporate & commercial, among others. Through Rajah & Tann Asia, it is a member of one of the largest legal networks in ASEAN with some 650 fee earners.

About Rajah & Tann Asia – www.rajahtannasia.com

Rajah & Tann Asia brings together leading law firms and lawyers in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, with each offering the highest standards of service to locally-based clients while collectively having the capacity to handle the most complex regional and cross-border transactions and to provide excellent legal counsel seamlessly across the region. With around 650 fee earners, all working towards one shared goal, we are lawyers who know Asia and who give our clients home advantage.