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Desiree Woo is Of Counsel in Milbank's Hong Kong office. Upon receiving her J.D. from UCLA Law School in 1993, she joined our Los Angeles office and was relocated to Hong Kong in 1995.
Desiree has advised clients on cross-border M&A and private equity investments in Asia. Her representations include acquisitions and sale by CCMP of their various investments across Asia, Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan in their acquisitions of distressed assets in several Asian countries; Darby Asia's investment in First Philippine Holdings, Taiwan Cellular's acquisition of TransAsia Telecom and AsiaInfo's investment in Intrinsic and Linktone.
Desiree has extensive project development and financing experience in Asia and in the U.S. She has advised project sponsors and lenders in power plants, water treatment, petrochemical and other projects in China, Taiwan, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Korea in Asia and in the United States. She advised Hynix Semiconductor and its joint venture Hynix-ST Semiconductor in the financing of its US$2 billion fab facility in Wuxi, China, which recently won deal of the year awards from Project Finance and Asian Legal Business.
Due to her language skills and cultural background, she has particular experience representing investors in the Greater China region, including one of the first wholly foreign-owned power project in the PRC, the US$750 million Meizhouwan project in Fujian Province, in which she had primary responsibility for the negotiation and drafting of the project agreements in Chinese and English, as well as the formation of the project company with the regulatory authorities.
Desiree has also been involved in a number of Asian capital markets transactions, including U.S. SEC registered and Rule 144A/Reg S debt and equity offerings covering telecommunications, power, semiconductor and railway industries.
Desiree graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Science (with Distinction). She received her MBA in Finance and Accounting from UCLA and worked for Price Waterhouse in the Los Angeles financial consulting practice for three years. She became a Certified Public Accountant and left Price Waterhouse to return to law school. She reads and writes Chinese and is fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese and Shanghainese dialects. She has been selected by Asia Law & Practice as a Leading Lawyer in their Guide to Asia's Leading Lawyers in 2000, 2001 and 2002 and was ranked in Chambers Asia in 2007. | 