China
With offices in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, O’Melveny helps clients realize China’s tantalizing opportunities, while navigating its formidable challenges.
With offices in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, O’Melveny helps clients realize China’s tantalizing opportunities, while navigating its formidable challenges.
O’Melveny started its growth and investment in China dated back to the mid-1990s, our China platform has served international clients by providing experienced counseling on business and legal matters ranging from day-to-day operational issues to strategically important undertakings.
To excel in China, a firm must be on the ground here, develop and recruit legal talent here, and foster business and governmental relationships here. O’Melveny has done that. O’Melveny has had a role in some of the most important cross-border business transactions involving China, and been at the forefront of legal developments over the decades. We have helped major American, and multinational companies achieve their goals in China—having established their first operations in the country, diversified their business through mergers and acquisitions, or formed an exit strategy.
We work with Chinese companies in their expansion overseas and fundraising. Since 2020, we have helped take more than 50 companies public via IPOs in the United States and Hong Kong. We have also counseled Chinese startups and secured antitrust clearances for other companies in China and around the region.
We are committed to China, inside and outside the boardroom. True to our firm’s values, we believe in contributing to the community. In mainland China and Hong Kong, our attorneys often take on pro-bono work. O’Melveny also sponsors a legal scholarship program for students in China since 1998; we support education for underprivileged youth in rural parts of the country; and we were at the front line for early Covid-19 pandemic relief support in China (in partnership with Medshare).
O’Melveny attorneys in China are:
- Top-rated in the key areas of M&A, Private Equity, Capital Markets, Competition and Antitrust, International Arbitration, Dispute Resolution and regulatory matters; and they excel in multiple sectors, from Life Sciences and Biotechnology to TMT and consumer products;
- Multilingual, and many have been educated in both China and the US;
- Responsive in a region that operates at “China speed”;
- Mindful of clients’ needs while being sensitive to the sensibilities of local professionals;
- Resourceful and well-connected; we regularly work with local firms, financial institutions, auditors, and regulators—we know them and they know us;
- Informed about international relations, and Chinese regulations and policies, and how they apply to our clients;
- Well-educated in their fields; many hold advanced degrees in the life sciences and physical sciences.
Advised the medical-device manufacturer on a takeover offer by Boston Scientific Group, the first of a Hong Kong Chapter 18A listed biotech company.
Advised the giant multinational in a US$200 million investment in a leading Southeast Asian courier company with operations in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and elsewhere in the region.
Advising the global leader in engineered materials and optoelectronic components in implementing a unique hold-separate remedy imposed by China’s SAMR following its acquisition of Finisar Corporation. We also advised Coherent Corp. on its acquisition of Coherent, Inc., a global provider of lasers and laser-based technology for scientific, commercial, and industrial customers; we also advise on the implementation of remedies imposed by SAMR following this further transaction.
Advised the company and other underwriters in the US$1.67 billion secondary listing of GDS Holdings Limited on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Advised Huatai Financial Holdings (Hong Kong) Limited, Morgan Stanley Asia Limited and UBS Securities Hong Kong Limited, and other underwriters in the approximately US$1.3 billion IPO of Eastroc Beverage (Group) Co., Ltd. on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the largest listing of a consumer beverage brand in Asia since 2020.
Advised this biotechnology company, which develops innovative biological therapies, in its US$458 million IPO and listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Represented the company in Hong Kong’s largest and highest profile litigation in years, a dispute over construction of the US$10 billion Shatin-Central rail link. Leighton, the main contractor for a key section of the project, faced allegations of construction defects, but a Hong Kong commission of inquiry reached favorable findings for our client, determining that the structure satisfied safety standards.
Represented joint sponsors and other underwriters in the listing of Mech-Mind Robotics Technologies Co., Ltd. a Specialist Technology Company under Chapter 18C of the Listing Rules, on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It was the first Hong Kong IPO in the embodied intelligence “eye-brain-hand” robotics sector.
Advised Metis TechBio, the world’s first biotech company focused on AI-powered nanomaterial delivery, in its US$270 million Hong Kong Chapter 18C IPO.
Advised the company in disposing of its 40% indirect interest in Wuhan Shenrui Property Co., Ltd., the owner of Wuhan Incity, a multi-use development.
Advised this biopharmaceutical company in its US$588 million IPO and listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Advised the leading private equity investor in the US$226 million sale of its entire interest in Yoplait China to Kunshan Nuoyuan Ruiyuan Management Consulting Co., Ltd.