Tilleke & Gibbins is proud to be one of the founding member firms for the newly launched Sino International Professional Advisory Council (SIPAC) platform. SIPAC is a global network of law firms that offer legal services tailored to the Chinese legal market. Legal advisors partnering with SIPAC provide Chinese companies with expert advice and guidance that enable them to conduct business in key jurisdictions around the world. SIPAC aims to create a platform that connects in-house counsel at Chinese companies with a wide range of legal services, to ensure that Chinese companies can conduct business overseas with maximum efficiency. By bringing together leading firms from different countries and industries, SIPAC offers a comprehensive solution for businesses seeking expert advice on doing business in different regions of the world. As a founding member firm of SIPAC, Tilleke & Gibbins brings a wealth of expertise and experience advising clients on complex legal matters across the region. The firm has been operating in Southeast Asia for over 130 years and has a team of over 220 lawyers, making it one of the largest in the region. With the launch of SIPAC, Tilleke & Gibbins and its fellow founding member firms are well-positioned to offer customized legal and regulatory recommendations that provide Chinese businesses with increased access to overseas markets.

On June 14, Auaychai Sukawong, partner and head of Tilleke & Gibbins’ regional tax practice, spoke at an OmegaWorldClass event in Bangkok titled “International Tax Planning in Practice.” The event focused on providing Thai companies with in-depth information to guide their outbound investment plans. Joined by other accomplished experts in the tax and legal sector, Auaychai shared his perspective on how careful tax planning can increase cash flow and minimize risk in international investment activities. He also added various practical insights from his work assisting investors and entrepreneurs with their international tax planning needs. OmegaWorldClass is an independent research institute based in Bangkok, founded to offer forward-looking business insights to corporate leaders and executives. The institute hosts conferences and seminars on a wide range of business-oriented topics. As one of Thailand’s foremost voices on tax issues—particularly tax structuring and tax planning strategies in Southeast Asia—Auaychai is a valuable addition to the OmegaWorldClass offerings.

Michael Ramirez, a counsel in Tilleke & Gibbins’ dispute resolution group in Bangkok, will provide the Thailand legal outlook at a Thailand Regional Forum meeting to be held at Sasin School of Management on June 9, 2022. The event will be a special relaunch meeting of the Thailand Regional Forum, an initiative established by Dataconsult some 35 years ago. After a hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic, the forum is restarting with Sasin School of Management as its new home. The Thailand Regional Forum at Sasin plans to hold regular meetings from July onward. The meeting will consist of forecasting panel presentations and roundtable discussions. In addition to Michael’s presentation of the legal outlook for Thailand, other speakers will offer insights into Thailand’s political, risk, economic, and human resources outlook in the coming year. Following the presentations, the speakers and attendees will participate in a roundtable discussions and Q&A to address any questions that came up during the session and to consider various potential scenarios. For more information on the Thailand Regional Forum, which offers memberships on a corporate basis, please see the Dataconsult website.

Tiziana Sucharitkul, managing partner and director of Tilleke & Gibbins’ dispute resolution group, provided in-depth insights on diversity and inclusion and law firms for a recent article in Asia Business Law Journal (ABLJ) on diversity and inclusion in law firms across Asia. In the article, which was published on March 30, 2022, Tiziana offers insights gained in her years in senior leadership at Tilleke & Gibbins and as a longtime advocate for law firm diversity and inclusion initiatives. The article begins by contrasting the demand for greater diversity among Western law firms—especially by corporate counsel—with attitudes in Asia, where questions of expertise and service often take precedence when it comes to legal work. The writer then quickly shifts to investigating the reasons for this, as well as exploring the current state of diversity in the Asian legal industry today. This section of the article leads with Tiziana’s explanation that leadership of Asian law firms are in a very different context than the social tensions that catalyzed many diversity initiatives in the West. However, this does not necessarily mean that diverse representation has lagged in this part of the world. Rather, as Tiziana points out, “Southeast Asian countries have some of the highest proportions of women in senior business leadership in the world.” She also notes that markers such as gender diversity and respect for minority rights can vary widely across Asia. Elsewhere in the article, other senior law firm leaders express similar observations and provide details on the diversity challenges in their countries of focus. For example, an expert on diversity in the Indian legal profession notes that local diversity concerns must also consider caste discrimination, and a partner at a global firm in Singapore speaks about the challenges of developing diversity policies that fit each local context. Tiziana