Overview
Sophie has over 25 years of experience in cross-border corporate transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, private equity transactions, takeovers and joint ventures across Southeast Asia. Sophie has specialist expertise in the financial services, energy and technology sectors and is well-known for her pivotal role in deals with a strong Singapore nexus.
Sophie began her career in London, where she trained and worked for five years. In 2010, Sophie spent three months in Jakarta on a secondment to PT Astra International, Indonesia’s largest conglomerate, assisting on the legal aspects of many of the group’s businesses.
Over the course of her career, Sophie has consistently worked on some of the largest and most complicated transactions in the region. Sophie is recognised for her Corporate/M&A expertise, and is ranked as a Band 1 lawyer by Chambers Asia-Pacific since 2020 and inducted into the ’Hall of Fame’ by Legal 500 Asia-Pacific since 2022. The leading legal directories note that she is “outstanding and on top of things”, “technically gifted and able to navigate different legal cultures”, concluding that she is "the gold standard for M&A in the region". Sophie has been ranked among the Top 20 most innovative lawyers from the past two decades at the Financial Times Innovative Lawyer Global Summit 2025 and also awarded Lawyer of the Year (Private Practice) at the Legal 500 Southeast Asia 2020/21 Awards.
Work Highlights
Sophie has led on a number of significant transactions. These include advising:
- Citi on the sale of its five consumer bank franchises in Southeast Asia - in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. At a deal value of over US$3bn, this was one of the largest M&A deals in Asia Pacific in 2021.
- Macquarie Asset Management, as part of a consortium, on its c.US$610m acquisition of a significant minority stake in Bersama Digital Infrastructure Asia Pte. Ltd., which holds a 62.4% stake in Indonesia-listed PT Tower Bersama Infrastructure Tbk., a leading independent telecom towers business in Indonesia. This is one of the largest foreign investments into the Indonesian digital infrastructure sector.
- AXA and Affin Bank on their MYR 290bn (€262m) auction sale of a majority stake in AXA Affin General Insurance Berhad and AXA Affin Life Insurance Berhad to Generali. This transaction was one of the largest insurance deals in Malaysia in 2021.
- Temasek on its Series E investment into Gojek, Indonesia's first and leading on-demand, multi-service tech platform.
- Everstone Capital on the auction sale of 100% of the Everise Group, a business process outsourcing organization with offices and subsidiaries located across seven jurisdictions worldwide (including Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines), to Brookfield Capital.
- ANZ on the sale to DBS of their consumer banking business in Southeast Asia – in Singapore, Hong Kong SAR, Indonesia, mainland China and Taiwan.
Country Of Admission