I would like to say thank you to Matthew McKee over at China Tax Insights for organising this.
I posted this today at Johns-Putra Limited, my legal consultancy website.
Geraldine Johns-Putra, Managing Director of Johns-Putra Limited, will be speaking at an upcoming seminar in Beijing, headlined “Mergers and Acquisitions: the Impact of China’s Growing Ascendancy”.
The seminar will be held on 16 March 2010 at the Sofitel Wanda, Beijing and is presented by Austcham Beijing, Britcham and China tax specialists Hwuason Laywers.
Topics covered will include:
- A basic overview of China’s new M&A rules
- Discussion of trends in inbound M&A in China, including analysis of the impact of laws introduced in recent years, increased scrutiny into new deals and the consequences of high-profile events impacting Sino-foreign commercial relations in the past year.
- Outline of the tax issues commonly found in China M&A deals, including an explanation of Circular 698, issued by the State Administration of Taxation in December 2009, which seeks to impose Chinese tax on off-shore equity transactions.
The Austcham website here has more information, including regarding registration.
Whether it is to access the China markets, form alliances, invest into or acquire China companies/technologies, this seminar will provide you with an overview of the M&A landscape and information on the opportunities and risks in China in 2010.
Matthew, who writes an amazingly detailed and knowledgeable China tax law blog (and is a fellow Aussie!) at China Tax Insights, will also be speaking at the seminar. The third speaker will be Alex Clar from Grandall Legal Group who is a specialist in M&A, corporate finance and securities.
2 Comments
David Wolf had some provocative China M&A reflections recently at Silicon Hutong: http://siliconhutong.typepad.com/silicon_hutong/2010/02/cheerleading-the-bankers.html. How about them apples?
That was very enjoyable, thank you, Adam.
I do agree that outbound investment from Chinese parties has become a sort of holy grail amongst advisors, whether they be bankers, accountants or lawyers. People are stumbling over themselves to grab a piece.
However, not without reason. The IBM PC division buy wasn’t such a great investment perhaps but there will be other that will be a better fit, and, relatively speaking, the Chinese have money.
To counterbalance this enthusiasm, as I understand it, Chinese policy is still very conservative in this area, so I don’t think excessive expenditure will be a problem. NDRC approval is not a straightforward consent to secure for outbound acquisitions. Moreover, there is the inhibiting factor on the other end to consider, namely securing the necessary inbound investment approvals from foreign governments.