With Korean investor interest in Vietnam rapidly increasing of late, Indochine Counsel has opened a Korean desk in Ho Chi Minh City in association with APEX LLC.
Dang The Duc, managing partner of Indochine Counsel, said that his firm had seen a noticeable increase in work from Korean companies in Vietnam which led to the decision to open the Korean desk. “More and more Korean investors [are] wanting to invest, or do business in Vietnam,” he said, “especially in service sectors such as media, entertainment, education, healthcare, retail, distribution etc., in addition to the manufacturing sectors and industries. Korea has been, for long, one of the leading foreign investors in Vietnam.”
Dang added that the desk would differentiate its services from those offered by existing Korean law firms in Vietnam to early-stage investors in the country. He said that Indochine Counsel's aim was to serve both Korean companies in Vietnam, as well as Vietnamese companies looking to invest in Korea. Noting that Indochine had mainly been involved in medium-sized deals in areas such as M&A, banking and finance till date, he said he hoped that the coming year would bring the firm “large-size deals between Korean and Vietnamese in such areas as infrastructure, property development and M&A.”
The Korean desk will be jointly managed and operated by the two firms, and will act as APEX’s Vietnam office. The co-heads of the desk are Kyung Cheon Lee, an attorney-at-law licensed in New York who is being relocated to Ho Chin Minh City from Seoul, and Indochine Counsel partner Bui Ngoc Hong. Lee is a Vietnam expert who has been involved in a number of projects in that country for clients such as Seoul City Hall, Korea Land Housing Corporation, Shinhan Bank, Kumho Industrial and Namkwang Engineering & Construction. Hong, on the other hand, specialises in cross-border transactions, M&As, inward investments, as well as corporate and commercial matters.
In a statement, Kee Woong Park, managing partner of APEX LLC, noted that the Vietnamese legal market was in a transitional phase. “Beyond the simple establishment of corporations, the Vietnamese market requires high quality legal services for the operation of corporations, and the collection of investment capital,” he said. Adding to this, he said that the desk will aim “to provide more localised and high quality legal services.” ALB
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