Home / Asia-Pacific
aerial view over a big container ship in the pacific ocean

Asia Pacific

We have been helping clients do business in Asia-Pacific for over 40 years. Our local knowledge coupled with our international strength provides you with the right legal guidance for both general corporate work and highly complex, strategic regional projects.

Sector focus is at our core, giving us better insight into your business priorities and allowing us to deliver industry-specific solutions. Whether you are an Asia-Pacific business seeking investments abroad or a company moving into the fast-growing Asia-Pacific economies, we have the talent and scale to support you.

Our lawyers deliver high-quality commercial legal advice in a region known for its complex regulatory systems and ongoing structural reform. With offices in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore, our team of 21 partners and 87 legal professionals can provide a full service, bespoke offering on the ground.

We have international expertise in English, French, German and other European languages, as well as Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Sinhalese and Tamil. We are one of very few firms in the region providing both civil and common law advice with qualified lawyers from the UK, Germany, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, US, Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia.

Through our established collaborations and associations across the Asia-Pacific region, we are also able to work alongside local law firms to deliver both international and local capability wherever you do business.

Contact us via our online form or give us a call if you are seeking experienced legal experts to help you successfully grow and expand your business interests in Asia-Pacific.

Read more Read less

Feed

23/03/2023
On the Pulse we­bin­ar series 2023 - Spring
Wel­come to the launch of the On the Pulse we­bin­ar series
20/09/2021
Singa­pore VCC Guide
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.
23/09/2021
Are you ready for the new PRC Per­son­al In­form­a­tion Pro­tec­tion Law?
On 1 Novem­ber 2021, the new PRC Per­son­al In­form­a­tion Pro­tec­tion Law will come in­to ef­fect. This is Chin­a's first om­ni­bus per­son­al data pro­tec­tion law, much like the GDPR.This new law will ap­ply both to...
21/04/2021
BRI - View from LatAm
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. 
22/04/2021
What does Chin­a's Belt and Road Ini­ti­at­ive mean for Lat­in Amer­ica?
The Belt and Road Ini­ti­at­ive (BRI) is China’s in­fra­struc­ture and fin­an­cing ini­ti­at­ive, de­vel­op­ing glob­al land and sea trade routes around the world. Many Lat­in Amer­ic­an na­tions have signed agree­ments...
25/11/2020
Hy­dro­gen pro­jects: What’s ahead in Asia Pa­cific?
Re­cog­nising the grow­ing role that hy­dro­gen will play in the net-zero fu­ture, gov­ern­ments and policy makers around the world are ramp­ing up ef­forts to bring for­ward policies that will fa­cil­it­ate the growth...
02/10/2020
BRI - View from APAC
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.
31/07/2020
An­nu­al Re­view 2019 – 2020
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
16/04/2019
CMS Soil and Ground­wa­ter Con­tam­in­a­tion Guide
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...
28/11/2018
Sup­port­ing you with data pro­tec­tion and cy­ber­se­cur­ity
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...