Lawyer for Hire: Knows China Well

By Sonja Steptoe/Menlo Park

HOWARD CHAO

O'MELVENY & MYERS, MENLO PARK

During a recent meeting between Howard Chao, the partner in charge of O'Melveny & Myers' Asia practice, and a Silicon Valley venture-capital tycoon shopping for a lawyer with expertise there, the conversation was less a sales pitch by Chao than a freewheeling exchange about corporate-finance trends and upcoming investment opportunities. The portfolio manager left the meeting enlightened about the Chinese business landscape, and Chao got a new client as well as a referral to a company in the VC's portfolio that might also need his counsel. Most people would call that rainmaking. Chao calls it "knowledge arbitrage." Chao's practice has added about 50 new Silicon Valley clients and handled some 150 transactions for them over the past three years as China becomes more appealing. "They're interested in doing deals, but they don't have a good composite view of what the rest of the business world is thinking and doing there," says Chao, 50, who speaks Mandarin and French and travels to China once a month to gather such intelligence. "We add value by supplying the local knowledge and expertise they require."

O'Melveny is the biggest international firm in Shanghai, owing to Chao's foresight a decade ago. Most big U.S. law firms focused on Hong Kong, and O'Melveny opened a branch there too. But Chao, who had spent a year teaching international law in Beijing and Shanghai in 1985, recognized early on that having a big presence on the mainland would be a competitive advantage. The Shanghai operation opened in 1996, and a Beijing branch was added in 2002, as soon as the government gave the green light. "It was clear that by being there, we could see what was happening and what was coming down the pike sooner and easier than Hong Kong--based firms jetting in and out and getting information on the fly," he says.

He looked smart again when Chinese banks decided to clear their pile of non-performing loans off the books as a first step to steadying the wobbly financial system. Anticipating a dealmaking frenzy, Chao and his team did their homework before potential buyers came knocking. A consortium led by the Morgan Stanley Real Estate Fund hired Chao and won the bidding on the first and biggest chunk, $1.3 billion in loans from Huarong Asset Management, in 2001. Such successes have made Chao fairly fearless. Last fall, during a staff retreat in Phoenix, Ariz., he led three lawyers from China on a three-hour mountain-biking trip in the blistering sun along rattlesnake-infested rocky roads."What the heck," he told them. "After China, this is nothing." Reckless attitude? Chao would probably call it risk arbitrage. --By Sonja Steptoe/Menlo Park