During the Cross-Border Investment elective course the China-EU School of Law’s (CESL) students had a wonderful opportunity to visit four esteemed international law firms in Beijing. Assistant Professor Monika Prusinowska accompanied us on the first two visits while Dr Francisco Costa-Cabral accompanied us on our second two visits.

We visited CMS on 26 April 2016. A few of us gathered early morning in order to beat the traffic and reach downtown. The travel time was soon forgotten as we went into our lecture with the partner Mr Nick Beckett. Our lecture concentrated on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and the cross-border nature of transactions that involve IPR. We also discussed the issues of evaluation of IPR in due diligence processes, before a merger or acquisition occurs. It was a very interactive session and we took away a lot from it.

Uría Menéndez is one of the largest law firms in Spain. We had the fortune of visiting their office in Beijing on 27 April 2016. The partner, Mr Francisco Martínez gave us a short history of the firm and briefed us on its future vision. The lecture session was conducted by the Associates Mr Daniel Pedro Valcarce and Ms Cindy Wang. This was a thoroughly informative session and we went through the entire process of cross-border investment step by step and we discussed the trends of outbound investment fromChina. By the end of this session, we had a clear understanding of mergers and acquisition and the processes involved.

We then visited Taylor Wessing on 28 April 2016. We were able to learn another aspect of cross-border investment, which are the structural issues involved in these transactions. We discussed the Chinese outbound investment strategies and also analysed some of the trends among the European investors. The partner Mr Ingo Vinck patiently explained and answered all our queries. We were therefore confident to ask more questions.

Finally, on 29 April 2016 we had a lecture session with Mr Florian Kessler, the Executive Director of WZR Consulting at the China University of Political Science and Law’s (CUPL) Haidian Campus. We had a very good, interactive session and discussed about various real concerns when it comes to merger or acquisition inChina. We debated on real case scenarios and touched upon strategies to deal with the issues that crop up. Mr Kessler also talked to us about the nature of European investment interest inChina.

All in all, these four visits gave us a real taste of how an international firm functions in the Chinese context and the kind of work they deal with on a regular basis. We thank CESL for the opportunity, our professors for accompanying us and finally the four firms for having taken the time out of their busy schedules.

Text by Lakshmi Menon(CESL MEIL student from 2015 intake)