March 30, 2011 5:44 PM

Davis Polk Partner Weighing Singapore Office Run

Posted by Anthony Lin

From The Asian Lawyer

Davis Polk & Wardwell partner Show-Mao Chen is considering running to be a Member of Parliament in Singapore.

Chen, the managing partner of Davis Polk’s Beijing office, confirmed via e-mail that he was considering an office run. "It is a part-time job, and many senior lawyers of law firms in Singapore are MPs," he said. "I will decide soon."

Davis Polk does not have a Singapore office, though. Asked if he could work part-time from Beijing or Hong Kong, or if he could launch a Singapore office for his firm if elected, Chen said: "We'll have to think about all that." He did not respond to requests for further comment.

If Chen does decide to run, he would face an uphill fight as a candidate for the opposition Workers' Party. Singaporean politics has been dominated for over 50 years by the People's Action Party (PAP), cofounded by Lee Kuan Yew. Prime minister from Singapore's founding in 1959 until 1990, Lee is still regarded as Singapore's leading political figure.

The PAP presently holds 82 of Singapore's 84 elected parliamentary seats, and Lee's eldest son Lee Hsien Loong is the present prime minister.

But, according to the Strait Times, Chen's impressive credentials make him a potential star for the Workers' Party, which is reportedly considering having him join current party leader Low Thia Khiang and others to contest a multiseat district. Chen, who was born in Taiwan but moved to Singapore as a child, attended Harvard University as an undergraduate, the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and Stanford Law School.

Chen has certainly been a star at Davis Polk, which he joined out of law school in 1992 and for whom he has worked in New York and Hong Kong, as well as Beijing. He has led the firm's work on some of the biggest capital markets transactions ever, including last year's $22 billion initial public offering by Agricultural Bank of China and the $21 billion IPO of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) in 2006.

Contact Anthony Lin at [email protected].

This report is part of The American Lawyer's expanded coverage of the Asian legal market--which also includes a new weekly e-newsletter, The Asian Lawyer. Click here for more from The Asian Lawyer and to sign up for a free subscription.

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