Bio

Catherine Shen is a partner of Commerce & Finance Law Offices. Catherine has over 18 years’ experience advising clients on large scale and complex cross-border M&A and private equity transactions. Catherine primarily handles private equity matters, cross border M&A transactions for top-tier private equity firms and leading multinational corporations. Besides traditional industries such as auto, real estate, healthcare and manufacturing, she is also experienced with M&A transactions in cutting-edge high technology industries such as AI, big data and autonomous driving. Catherine has extensive experience advising on cross-border real estate transactions at both corporate and asset levels, including the establishment of joint venture investment platforms, equity financing by new infrastructure operators, as well as the acquisition, development, leasing and disposal of properties. The type of assets involved in these transactions include warehouses and cold chain logistics assets, internet data centers, life science and other new economy industrial parks, rental apartments, hotels and other mixed-used commercial complexes. Catherine has served as the leading counsel for a number of complicated cross-border M&A transactions in China’s new infrastructure sector (i.e., warehouses and cold chain logistics assets, internet data centers and industrial parks) by leading financial investors, and was instrumental in their structuring, negotiation and implementation. For example, Catherine advised a world leading Asian sovereign wealth fund in its acquisition of multiple modern logistics and warehouse facilities from JD Group at an asset value of RMB10.9 billion in 2019, which won the PRC Deal of the Year award from China Business Law Journal in 2019. In addition, Catherine has a particular expertise with corporate, regulatory and compliance matters in the automotive industry. She has represented notable players in the automotive industry including auto OEMs and parts suppliers on a wide variety of corporate and compliance matters with regard to autonomous driving, car sharing, telematics and connected car related projects and M&A transactions. She often speaks on regulatory developments in China’s auto industry at auto conferences and seminars and has written various articles in this area.