DLA Piper today announces that a group of lawyers led by partners Joyce Chan and Heng Loong Cheong will join the firm’s Hong Kong office from Dewey & LeBoeuf.
Joyce Chan is the Principal of Joyce Sze Ho Chan & Co, Dewey & LeBoeuf’s Hong Kong associated firm. Joyce specialises in insurance and has over a decade of experience in the insurance industry advising on a broad range of regulatory and corporate insurance matters. Previously, she has led the legal teams at AXA China Region Insurance Company Limited and New York Life Insurance Worldwide Limited in Hong Kong.
Heng Loong Cheong is a corporate lawyer whose practice comprises public and private mergers and acquisitions, complex corporate reorganisations and equity and debt capital markets transactions. He has extensive experience advising companies in the insurance, natural resources and renewable energy sectors. Prior to joining Dewey & LeBoeuf, Heng Loong spent six years at Clifford Chance London as a general corporate finance lawyer.
Joyce and Heng Loong follow a number of significant additions to DLA Piper’s insurance practice including most recently Paul Chen, former managing partner of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s Hong Kong office, who has joined DLA Piper’s office in Silicon Valley. In February 2012, Bill Marcoux, who leads the firm’s Global Insurance Transactions and Regulation Group, joined the firm in New York and PK Paran, Roger Loo and Melanie James were appointed to DLA Piper’s London office and Peter Rice to the Boston office, in April 2012.
Bob Charlton, Managing Director of DLA Piper Asia-Pacific, commented: “Joyce and Heng Loong are very high caliber lawyers with impressive reputations advising insurance companies on complex transactions. We will be delighted to welcome both Joyce and Heng Loong to our Hong Kong office where they will not only significantly boost our corporate offering locally but across our global platform too.”
“Our insurance and reinsurance capabilities are growing at a phenomenal rate,” said Bill Marcoux, head of DLA Piper’s Insurance Sector Transactions and Regulation practice. “The appointments of Joyce and Heng Loong in Hong Kong, combined with the hire of Paul Chen to work across Silicon Valley and New York, will put us in an extremely strong and unique position to meet the growing demand for insurance-related transactional activity in Asia.”
“The critical mass we are achieving in the insurance arena will be crucial to the success of our clients around the world, particularly in Asia, which is quickly emerging as one of the most active transactional and regulatory markets in this important sector,” said Michael P. Murphy, Global Head of DLA Piper’s Insurance and Reinsurance Sector Group. “Joyce, Heng Loong and their group will be extremely important players in the market who will enhance what is already one of the leading, multi-dimensional practices of its kind.”
