Asia Pacific

The Singa­pore Vari­able Cap­it­al Com­pany (VCC) is a new cor­por­ate struc­ture for in­vest­ment funds con­sti­tuted un­der the Vari­able Cap­it­al Com­pan­ies Act, which took ef­fect in Janu­ary 2020. It is the first fund-spe­cif­ic en­tity to be launched in Singa­pore and it is in­ten­ded to strengthen Singa­pore’s po­s­i­tion as a lead­ing Asi­an fund man­age­ment centre.Over the past 20+ months the CMS Singa­pore funds team have taken the time to un­der­stand the leg­al and op­er­a­tion­al prac­tic­al­it­ies of launch­ing, clos­ing and op­er­at­ing a VCC fund, which go far bey­ond the VCC Act it­self. As such, this guide re­flects our team’s col­lect­ive hands-on ex­per­i­ence of the VCC gained over mul­tiple VCC fund form­a­tion man­dates.The pur­pose of this guide is there­fore to provide an over­view of the VCC and its key fea­tures, as well as of the VCC es­tab­lish­ment pro­cess. It also ad­dresses some of the VCC ques­tions that have been fre­quently asked of us by both man­agers and in­vestors alike.

China’s Belt and Road Ini­ti­at­ive (BRI) is where some of the key is­sues of our time in­ter­sect, in­clud­ing glob­al­isa­tion, sus­tain­ab­il­ity, the mod­ern­isa­tion of in­fra­struc­ture, new tech­no­logy and health­care. But it also marks the con­ver­gence of some ser­i­ous con­cerns, such as en­vir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion, in­ter­na­tion­al debt, the Cov­id-19 pan­dem­ic and, in­creas­ingly, geo­pol­it­ic­al ten­sions between the US and China.Our new re­port shows that sen­ti­ment to­wards BRI in Lat­in Amer­ica re­mains re­l­at­ively pos­it­ive, des­pite such head­winds. From the in­volve­ment of Chinese busi­nesses in Panama Canal ports to Chinese in­vest­ments in lith­i­um min­ing and re­new­able en­ergy, trans-Pa­cific con­nec­tions between Lat­in Amer­ic­an eco­nom­ies and China’s Asi­an power­house con­tin­ue to grow.China’s am­bi­tions to ad­vance Belt and Road co­oper­a­tion high­light the po­ten­tial for BRI to help na­tions in Lat­in Amer­ica bridge the re­gion’s massive in­fra­struc­ture gap and re­cov­er from the ter­rible dam­age of the pan­dem­ic, as well as of­fer­ing many new op­por­tun­it­ies for re­gion­al busi­nesses and in­vestors. 

The Asia-Pa­cific re­gion (APAC) has seen ex­tens­ive Belt and Road (BRI) in­vest­ment already, and prom­ises much more.But our sur­vey of BRI par­ti­cipants in APAC re­veals un­ex­pec­ted levels of am­bi­val­ence about some as­pects of BRI pro­jects.Can these po­ten­tial dif­fi­culties be tackled in a way that will ad­dress con­cerns about is­sues such as trans­par­ency and sus­tain­ab­il­ity, and en­cour­age the great­er in­volve­ment of in­ter­na­tion­al busi­nesses that China hopes to see? And how are the un­pre­ced­en­ted prob­lems of 2020, in­clud­ing the glob­al pan­dem­ic and trade dis­putes, af­fect­ing the pro­spects of BRI?Our APAC re­port looks at is­sues in­clud­ing:Dif­fi­culties in BRI pro­jects ex­per­i­enced by APAC par­ti­cipants, and the po­ten­tial for resolv­ing these.The ef­fects of Cov­id-19 on BRI.Mit­ig­at­ing BRI risk and man­aging dis­putes.Po­ten­tial trends in the fin­an­cing of BRI pro­jects.The sec­tors at­tract­ing the most in­terest among BRI par­ti­cipants.The im­pact of BRI 2.0.

We are liv­ing in tur­bu­lent times, char­ac­ter­ised by polit­ic­al, cli­mate and health crises. The most acute of these – the COV­ID-19 pan­dem­ic – has clearly shown how in­ter­con­nec­ted our eco­nom­ies are: travel, com­merce and sup­ply chains world­wide have been im­pacted. No in­di­vidu­al or busi­ness has re­mained totally un­af­fected by it.As a glob­al or­gan­isa­tion, with a pres­ence in key busi­ness hubs around the world, we are wit­ness­ing the im­pact of the pan­dem­ic firsthand. Our teams in Asia, Europe, Africa and Lat­in Amer­ica are help­ing cli­ents deal with this un­pre­ced­en­ted situ­ation. Un­fold­ing in dif­fer­ent in­tens­it­ies in dif­fer­ent parts of the world at dif­fer­ent times, our teams are in the for­tu­nate po­s­i­tion of be­ing able to con­nect with and learn from each oth­er. This en­ables us to sup­port our cli­ents in a mean­ing­ful way, listen­ing to and un­der­stand­ing their con­cerns and provid­ing them with busi­ness-rel­ev­ant ad­vice that draws on in­sights from our ex­perts world­wide.In this crisis, we, as a so­ci­ety, are at a cross­roads. What is cer­tain is that for in­di­vidu­als and busi­nesses (ours in­cluded) there will be no ‘back to busi­ness as usu­al’. Things need to (and will) change. How we shape the ‘new nor­mal’ is up to us. In this An­nu­al Re­view, we look at some key de­vel­op­ments that are in­creas­ingly im­pact­ing busi­ness suc­cess. Com­pan­ies need to take these in­to con­sid­er­a­tion when ad­apt­ing their op­er­a­tions to the new busi­ness en­vir­on­ment.The months ahead will be chal­len­ging for us all. Busi­nesses will need to think stra­tegic­ally and po­s­i­tion them­selves for suc­cess in the new nor­mal. We at CMS see it as our task to guide our cli­ents through this chan­ging busi­ness land­scape.Mat­thi­as Licht­blau (Ex­ec­ut­ive Dir­ect­or) Pierre-Sé­bas­tien Thill (Chair­man) Duncan We­st­on (Ex­ec­ut­ive Part­ner) CMS Ex­ec­ut­ive Team

From the 1970s on­wards, soil and ground­wa­ter con­tam­in­a­tion has be­come an in­creas­ingly im­port­ant reg­u­lat­ory is­sue. However, there are still no uni­form reg­u­la­tions. Nu­mer­ous sets of rules have been de­veloped...

Our data pro­tec­tion team provides coun­sel across a wide range of areas in­clud­ing data pro­tec­tion re­gis­tra­tion and policy de­vel­op­ment, data se­cur­ity and mo­bile device en­cryp­tion, data trans­fer pro­ced­ures...