Catherine Miao

Ms. Catherine Miao serves as legal counsel for many large financial institutions, international investment banks, overseas PE funds, multinational companies and real estate developers. She excels in complex and difficult non-litigation projects and has successfully handled multiple innovative legal matters that were unprecedented in China. She was recognized as one of the 2020 ALB China Top 15 Female Lawyers and one of the 2019 ALB China Top 15 M&A Lawyers. She was also named as one of the outstanding lawyers in the category of “Corporate/Commercial: East Coast (Guangdong)” by Chambers in 2019-2021, and one of the recommended lawyers in the fields of “Bankruptcy and Restructuring” and “Real Estate and Construction” by Legal 500 Asia Pacific in 2020.

Catherine has been practicing in the field of special situation/opportunity investment in China since the establishment of the four major financial AMCs in 1999 and is a pioneer and leading lawyer in that field. She has completed many benchmark projects in the industry, including: assisting China Orient AMC in closing China’s first deal of disposing of NPL portfolios by using foreign capital in 2002; assisting AMCs in establishing Sino-foreign cooperative joint ventures engaged in the NPL business; and assisting AMCs in completing a large number of projects involving the acquisition or transfer of non-performing assets, debt restructuring, bankruptcy reorganization & liquidation, and debt-for-equity swap of listed companies. Over the years, she has also assisted well-known overseas special situation funds in closing many deals, including assisting Bain, Oaktree, Blackstone, Cerberus, TSSP, CDH and other internationally renowned special situations funds in actively making investments in the Chinese NPL market and helping them successfully complete multiple NPL acquisitions as well as restructuring of distressed enterprises. The accumulated book value of projects that Catherine has served in this field is over RMB 100 billion.

In the corporate and M&A sectors, Catherine has acted as the Relationship Partner of JunHe for Shell as well as the Relationship Partner of JunHe for Mars Wrigley, coordinating resources on a firm-wide basis so as to provide quality legal services for the clients over many years. She has provided legal services to many multinational corporations, stated-owned enterprises, and private-owned enterprises in their acquisitions of equity and assets of various nature as well as their routine operation.

In the real estate sector, Catherine has assisted a number of real estate developers in completing over one hundred real estate acquisitions in recent years. She assisted Aoyuan in completing its acquisition of the control over Jinghan Stock, an A-share real estate company. Catherine also assisted many real estate PE funds and special opportunity investment funds in completing a number of real estate acquisitions as well as debt and/or corporate reorganization of distressed real-estate companies.