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Katherine Chew

Partner
About

Katherine Chew is a Partner in the Corporate team in DLA Piper's Singapore office.

Katherine has more than 16 years of experience advising on corporate and employment matters across South East Asia.

Katherine’s practice covers multi-jurisdictional mergers & acquisitions, market entry and corporate establishment advice, commercial contracts, corporate leases and general corporate advisory matters. Katherine leads our corporate reorganisations practice in Singapore, having acted for numerous multinational corporations in pre-acquisition and pre-closing reorganisations, post-acquisition integrations and tax driven reorganisations.

Katherine is also a ranked employment lawyer and regularly advises her clients on all aspects of the employment cycle which enables her to guide clients through all employment issues for acquisitions and reorganisations.

Professional QualificationsAdvocate and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of SingaporeSolicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales
Languages
  • English
  • Chinese (Mandarin)
Education
  • National University of Singapore, LL.B. (2nd Class Upper Honours, Dean's List), 2005
  • Postgraduate Practical Law Course: Board of Legal Education Singapore (Ranked 10th), 2006

Awards

  • Ranked as a leading individual (Band 3) for Employment (International) in Singapore by Chambers Asia Pacific, 2022 – 2024.
  • Named as one of Singapore most influential lawyers aged 40 and under by Singapore Business Review, 2018.

Publications

• Getting the Deal Through: Corporate Reorganisations, Singapore – 2020, 2021 and 2022

•  Asia Pacific Employment Law Forecast 2021, 16 February 2021

• Mass layoffs and collective redundancies guide, 6 October 2020

• Singapore: Tightening of work pass requirements, 28 August 2020

• Singapore: Advisory on retrenchment benefits payable to retrenched employees as a result of business difficulties due to COVID-19, 27 May 2020

• Singapore: Further financial measures introduced amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, 27 May 2020

• Circuit Breaker measures introduced to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Singapore – Effect on workplaces, 7 April 2020

• Measures introduced for Singapore workplaces to prevent the spread of COVID 19, 2 April 2020

• An update on the impact of the coronavirus on business in Singapore, 12 February 2020

• Harsher penalties on discriminatory employment practices in Singapore, 29 January 2020

• Asia Pacific Employment Law Forecast 2020, 23 January 2020

Prior Experience

Mergers & Acquisitions

  • Acted for INEOS Holdings Limited in its USD 330 million acquisition of Mitsui Phenols, a leading phenols manufacturer in Singapore.
  • Acted for Industrious in its acquisition of The Great Room, a hospitality-led premium coworking space operator with operations in Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand.
  • Acted for Storskogen AB in its acquisition of CMTi, with business operations in Indonesia and Singapore and in its acquisition of XodBox in Singapore.
  • Acted for Wise Road Limited in its acquisition of UTAC Semiconductors headquartered in Singapore with operations in China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.
  • Acted for a private equity fund in the China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam aspects of its £1 billion sale of an undisclosed equity stake in its education group.
  • Acted for Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting in respect of its US$144 million multi-jurisdiction acquisition of the L.D. Waxson group involving the acquisition of manufacturing facilities in China and Malaysia and marketing entities in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.
  • Advised Baltimore-based and Nasdaq listed Laureate Education (NASDAQ:LAUR), the world’s largest global network of higher education institutions on the sale of its global network institution in Malaysia – INTI University and Colleges to HOPE Education Group (Hong Kong) Company Limited.
  • Advised ZASH Global Media and Entertainment Corporation on the acquisition of Lomotif Private Limited, a Singapore-based video application developer.
  • Acted for Pitney Bowes Inc. in its acquisition of Cresco Data, a specialist cloud-based technology platform in Singapore.
  • Acted for a leading professional services provider in its acquisition of a payroll business in Singapore and Malaysia.

 

Corporate Reorganisations

  • Acted for Ecolab Inc. in the Asia-Pacific aspects across 11 jurisdictions of its global spin-off of its upstream energy business to Apergy Inc.
  • Acted for a French listed specialty chemicals company in respect of its corporate reorganisation and subsequent sale of its distribution and agency business in Asia spanning nine Asia Pacific jurisdictions including Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam.
  • Advised Marsh & McLennan on the corporate, employment and regulatory issues in their global post-acquisition integration with the Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group in various Asia Pacific jurisdictions including Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia.
  • Advising numerous multinational corporations on the corporate and employment aspects of their corporate reorganisation transactions both pre and post acquisition.

Memberships And Affiliations

Honorary Secretary, Girl Guides Singapore

Connect

Phone

+65 6512 6046
(Work, Singapore)
+65 9660 8662
(Work, Singapore)