With over 20 years’ experience in the Asia-Pacific insurance market, Peter is one of the region’s most well respected corporate insurance lawyers.
A former partner of CMS Cameron McKenna, Peter played a lead role in the development of the firm’s Asia insurance practice, before moving to senior in-house counsel roles with a number of general and life insurers, including AIA, where he led the team that won the Insurance In-House Team of the Year 2009, and more recently with MetLife.
Peter’s experience spans M&A, divestment and reorganisations, strategic alliances (including bancassurance), regulatory, licensing and compliance matters, product and distribution issues and litigation management in Hong Kong and the Asia-Pacific region.
Kennedys now has one of the largest corporate insurance practices in Hong Kong having carved out a reputation as counsel of choice for a wide range of insurance and corporate clients.
Recent significant work undertaken by our Corporate and Commercial Group includes advising New York Life Hong Kong on the US$350 million sales of its business operations to ACE Insurance. It also acted as local counsel for QBE on its US$420 million purchase of Hang Seng Bank’s general insurance manufacturing unit and its bancassurance agreement with HSBC.
Richard Bates, Managing Partner of Kennedys Hong Kong and head of our Corporate and Commercial Group, says:
“This is a significant appointment for Kennedys and our clients.
Having worked both in-private practice and in-house, Peter brings invaluable commercial knowledge of the legal challenges our clients face and how best to deal with them.
We expect the current high levels of M&A activity in the insurance sector to continue. Our clients also increasingly have to deal with regulatory, licensing and solvency issues and manage their relationships with strategic partners. Peter is one of the few lawyers with expertise across all these areas.”
