Gianluca D’Agnolo is the managing partner of the Chiomenti Law Firm’s Beijing representative office. Mr. D’Agnolo has been assisting foreign companies in their investments in China for more than ten years. He specializes in corporate M&A. He is author of several publications on foreign investment in China.
David Kidd is a partner in Allen & Overy LLP’s Hong Kong office and he is the head of the Asia Business Restructuring Practice. Mr. Kidd has more than twenty years of experience of advising on restructurings in Europe (based in London) and for the last ten years in Asia (based in Hong Kong). Mr. Kidd acts for creditors, debtors, and other stakeholders in relation to the restructuring of the debt and operations of underperforming companies. Mr. Kidd also acted for Chinese provincial governments, their Hong Kong financing companies and financial creditors in relation to the restructuring of their substantial debts in the Asia crisis.
Henry H. Liu is a partner at DLA Piper LLP (U.S.), which is one of the largest law firms in the world, with more than 7,000 people including 3,500 lawyers across sixty-eight offices in thirty countries.
As a U.S. and Chinese lawyer, Mr. Liu has extensive and substantive experience in most types of cross-border transactions involving China and Asia Pacific. Mr. Liu is widely recognized as a leader in the China- and Asia-related legal, business, financing, and regulatory communities.
Mr. Liu served as the general counsel and director-general at the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), China's national regulator for securities, futures, investment fund industries, and capital markets, from 1995 to 2000, making him one of the highest ranked officials, regulators, and legal officers in China in his age group. Mr. Liu was the head of CSRC's National Securities Law Drafting Group and was directly responsible for the enactment of China's first national securities law in 1998. Mr. Liu's investment banking background has included serving as a managing director of investment banking at the U.S. and global investment banks of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (DLJ) and Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) in the early 2000s, playing a key role in a variety of China- and Asia-related M&A, financing, and capital markets transactions.
Mr. Liu was honored with the “Asia Star Award” by BusinessWeek as China's national policy-maker, consecutively in 1998 and 1999, together with top Chinese and Asian national leaders, for his role in addressing the Asia financial crisis and in building China's capital and financial markets. He received the “Global Leader for Tomorrow Award” from the World Economic Forum at the Global Summit in Davos in 1999. AsiaWeek (Times Inc.) recognized him as a “Nation Builder” at the 50th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China in 1999.
Mr. Liu was a John M. Olin Research Fellow in Law and Economics at Harvard and Stanford, and the American Standard Companies Fellow in Management at Oxford. He is a member of the New York State Bar and is qualified in China. His educational background has included Peking University, Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford.
Deryck A. Palmer is partner and co-chairman of the Financial Restructuring Department at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP. Mr. Palmer concentrates his practice in the representation of debtors as well as creditors under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, and has handled a wide variety of workout, corporate restructuring, and bankruptcy matters. For more than ten years, Mr. Palmer served as a foreign expert on U.S. bankruptcy law to the Chinese government and was instrumental in the drafting of the new PRC Enterprise Bankruptcy Law. Recognized by Turnarounds and Workouts as one of the nation’s top “Outstanding Bankruptcy Lawyers,” he is active in the American Bankruptcy Institute and the Turnaround Management Association. Mr. Palmer can be reached at
[email protected].
Richard C. Pedone, a partner at Nixon Peabody LLP, represents secured creditors, strategic buyers of financially troubled businesses, purchasers of distressed debt, creditors’ committees, asset purchasers, and others in the financial restructuring and bankruptcy processes. He also frequently represents corporations in workout negotiations with their creditors and bankruptcy planning. Mr. Pedone is a Fellow of the International Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Professionals. He regularly represents creditors, including indenture trustees and other fiduciaries, in cross-border insolvency matters. Mr. Pedone’s effectiveness as a restructuring attorney is greatly enhanced by his litigation and trial experience. Trials and evidentiary hearings that he has conducted include a contest over creditors' rights to hundreds of millions of dollars in prepayment premiums and default interest in Calpine bankruptcy cases in New York; contested asset sales in bankruptcy; the defense of a corporate veil piercing action for a French construction company under attack by its subsidiaries’ creditors; and the prosecution of a complex commercial lease dispute. Mr. Pedone has also successfully defended several of these trial successes at the appellate level.
Kathleen Wong is a counsel in Allen & Overy LLP’s Shanghai office. She is an English and Canadian law qualified lawyer and has worked in the London and Singapore offices. Ms. Wong focuses on restructuring with a PRC component and has broad experience in Europe and Asia in a variety of finance transactions, including pre- IPO financing in the PRC, leveraged finance, project finance, and syndicated lending, involving international interests in diverse industries. Ms. Wong regularly provides training to lawyers, bankers, and finance professionals on insolvency and enforcement issues in the PRC.
