Moves – 22 July 2010

Mayer Brown JSM has appointed prominent corporate lawyer Xiang Yang Ge to its Beijing office as Head of Projects in China. Xiang has 20 years of experience representing foreign investors doing business in China and advising large Chinese enterprises on outbound investments across the globe. He regularly handles cross-border mergers and acquisitions, with a particular focus on the oil and gas, mining and renewable energy industries, and has worked on several recent prominent transactions including advising a major Chinese oil company on its US$2.5 billion acquisition of oil and gas assets in 11 jurisdictions, and advising a major Chinese mining company on its proposed acquisition of an Australian public mining company.

Norton Rose has made two lateral partner hires with the appointments of Gigi Cheah and Justin Davidson to its Hong Kong office. Cheah and Davidson have joined the firm’s global intellectual property, communications, media and technology team to develop that practice in Asia. Cheah is a non-contentious intellectual property and technology lawyer who specialises in technology procurement, licensing, outsourcing, life sciences, data privacy and commercial work, as well as telecoms broadcasting and competition work. Davidson is both a contentious and non-contentious intellectual property lawyer, with a focus on transactional, exploitation and advisory intellectual property work, intellectual property disputes and prosecution, and general commercial and life sciences work. Both join the firm from the Hong Kong office of DLA Piper.

WongPartnership LLP has appointed Simon Tay as a senior consultant. Well-known for his work on environmental law and international and public law (with an emphasis on political and economic issues), Tay advises multinational corporations on regional business investments as well as sustainability and environmental issues. He has also advised international and regional governments on international law and relations. Tay is the chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA), an independent think tank which represents Singapore in the ASEAN-ISIS network. He also teaches international law and public policy at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law and the LKY School of Public Policy, and has previously taught at Harvard Law School, Yale University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. His experience and insight into international and political affairs will bring an added dimension to the firm’s regional M&A practice, especially for clients expanding overseas.