CHAN Adrian Pengee, PBM

Adrian is Head of the Corporate Department and a Senior Partner at Lee & Lee.  He joined Lee & Lee in 1989.

He is recommended as a Leading Individual for Corporate/M&A in Singapore by Chambers Global in The Client’s Guide to the World’s Leading Lawyers for Business, which described him as a “heavyweight [who is] a great favourite with his many corporate clients”, “calm and composed [while] managing his team efficiently, listening well and staying on top of matters” and who is “a serious lawyer doing an excellent job”. Chambers Asia Pacific in its Guide to Asia’s Leading Lawyers for Business classified him as a Leading Individual who is “excellent and experienced”, “very technical and certainly hands on”, “commercial, effective, knowledgeable, very fast on his feet but with that gentle demeanour while still being very firm” and is “solution-oriented, receiving praise from both clients and peers, who highlight his commercial awareness”.

He is recommended as a Leading Lawyer in the IFLR1000 – Guide to the World’s Leading Financial Law Firms.  He has also been described by The Asia Pacific Legal 500 in its Guide to Asia’s Commercial Law Firms as “a terrific corporate lawyer with an impressive track record in the market” and has been recommended in the same publication as a Leading Individual in the field of Capital Markets.  In addition, Who’s Who Legal has described him as “a first-class corporate lawyer” who is “serious and respected”.  He has separately been named by the World Legal Forum in its Guide to Law Firms Around the Globe as part of the “impressive next generation” of top corporate lawyers in Singapore.

He has been nominated by the Prime Minister to serve on the Legal Service Commission. He is also a Board member of the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority of Singapore (“ACRA”) and Hogan Lovells Lee & Lee, the joint law venture between Lee & Lee and the international law firm, Hogan Lovells.  He is the lead independent director of Yoma Strategic Holdings, AEM Holdings and Global Investments, and an independent director of Ascendas Funds Management and Hong Fok Corporation, all of which are listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX).  He also serves as a director on Astrea III and Azalea Asset Management, which are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Temasek.  In addition, the SGX has appointed him to its Catalist Advisory Panel to review Catalist Sponsor and Registered Professional applications.

He was the First Vice-Chairman of the Singapore Institute of Directors and currently serves as the Deputy Chairman of its Advocacy and Research Committee.  He is Chairman of the Corporate Practice Committee of the Law Society of Singapore and serves on its Audit Committee.  He currently chairs the Panel of the Institute of Corporate Law at ACRA. He sits on the Corporate Governance and Regulations Committee of the Singapore International Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Shared Services for Charities Limited, which is a registered charity and an Institution of a Public Character, and on the Ethics Review Committee of the Singapore Polytechnic.

He has been appointed to the Corporate Governance and Directors’ Duties Working Group of the Steering Committee that was established by the Ministry of Finance to review and rewrite the Companies Act of Singapore. He has also co-authored Singapore’s first “Annotated Code of Corporate Governance” for Lexis-Nexis that is published in Woon’s Corporations Law.

He has been elected to and continues to serve on the Executive Council of the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises as its Honorary Secretary. He currently serves on the Pro-Enterprise Panel, chaired by the Head of Civil Service and supported by the Ministry of Trade & Industry, which addresses feedback from the private sector on unnecessary or outdated government rules that hinder businesses and stifle entrepreneurship with a view to eliminating red-tape.  In addition, he has been appointed the Honorary Legal Advisor to both the Singapore Institute of Engineering Technologists and the Singapore Optometrist Association.

He was appointed to the Audit Committee Guidance Committee, established by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the ACRA and the SGX to develop practical guidance for audit committees of SGX-listed companies and raise corporate governance standards, and was appointed by the Corporate Governance Oversight Committee (comprising MAS, ACRA, SGX and CAD) to the Working Group to review and update the Guidebook for Audit Committees. He has been appointed by the Public Accountants Oversight Committee to serve on the Complaints and Disciplinary Panel of ACRA in administering the Accountants Act.

He served on the SPRING/CPIB Working Group to develop the ISO 37001 Standard on Anti-bribery Management Systems and on the Working Group and Steering Committee that developed the Singapore Stewardship Principles for Responsible Investors. In addition, he has served on the Lemon Law Taskforce set up by the Ministry of Trade & Industry and The Consumers Association of Singapore to make recommendations to the government on the scope and form of lemon laws in Singapore. He has also served on the Taxpayers Feedback Panel of the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore.

For the Singapore Institute of Legal Education, he lectures on “Corporate Governance”, is an Examiner for the Corporate and Commercial Practice paper for the Bar Admissions and Examinations and is the Principal Examiner for Company Law for the Foreign Practitioner Examinations.  As part of his pro-bono work, he conducts training for ACRA’s Director Compliance Programme for errant directors.

He has spoken at the King’s College London/NUS Masters degree course, the Post-Graduate Diploma Programme at the Ong Teng Cheong Institute of Labour Studies and regularly conducts the Singapore Management University-SID Executive Certificate in Directorship. He has also spoken at the NUS-run Singapore-Commonwealth Seminar for Chief Executives and the Nanyang Technological University MBA course.  He has participated in formal legal study missions with the Law Society of Singapore to Myanmar and the People’s Republic of China.