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Lexygen ‘chugs along’ without Singapore partner Yang Yen Thaw, who joins Sino-Sg firm Dacheng Wong

Yang Yen Thaw: India::China; Software::Hardware
Yang Yen Thaw: India::China; Software::Hardware
Private equity boutique Lexygen’s former Singapore partner Yang Yen Thaw, who left in December 2011, has joined Chinese firm Dacheng Wong Alliance LLP as co-head of its India practice from Singapore.

“Lexygen was a great experience and it was fun working together with a smart and hardworking lot. But having fulfilled what I set out to do for Lexygen, the time had come to move on as I wanted a wider international platform to operate from. Hence a choice of an international firm,” said Yang, who is qualified to practice law in India.

Based in Singapore, he is the firm’s third full-time India lawyer alongside senior associate Rahul Singh Talwar and associate Richa Chaturvedi. Managing principal Aloysius Wee, who divides his time between Singapore and China, co-heads the the India group.

“Though trading is a huge market for both economies, mergers and acquisitions are yet to take off,” said Yang about the India and China business relationship, blaming this primarily on existing Chinese laws that inhibited Indian investors. As an off shoot of this, however, Yang did get to facilitate deals for Indian and Chinese clients in the neighbouring South East Asian region, and India remained China’s largest trading partner as business houses competed for products.

Despite China being a “manufacturing giant” and India a “technology giant”, Yang noted that so far “geo and socio-politics, mutual envy and caution, third parties’ inhibitions prevent” China and India having been “enmeshed like a computer and its software”.

Earlier this year, Dacheng severed its joint law venture (JLV) under Singaporean law with Central Chambers, forming a new JLV with Wong Alliance to become Dacheng Wong Alliance.

Yang had joined Lexygen in January 2011. Lexygen founding partner Vijay Sambamurthi commented that he wished Yang well, who left because and wanted to focus more on a China-India oriented role, rather than what Lexygen was aiming for in Singapore, which was to “build out a robust and qualitative Indian law operation for the APAC region”.

“As for our Singapore office, it continues to chug along at a slow and steady clip - not unlike our firm's overall growth strategy,” added Sambamurthi. “Right now, we have senior people from India rotating through that office (I visit fairly often too), and the long-term plan continues to be to have someone full-time (and senior) based there.”

“We are not in a hurry to do this, however, as we are a little bandwidth constrained to give the search process our full attention, as we are all a bit busy with work here in India. So, we'll take our time to make sure that we hire the right person for this.”

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