Tricor Group, a provider of business, corporate, investor and debt administration services across Asia, has recently acquired Richful Deyong (RFDY) – a deal that strengthens Tricor’s ability to serve Chinese investors going overseas. The deal helps Tricor expand its Asian footprint and take advantage of Chinese economic expansion programs such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the Greater Bay Area project.

“This has been the largest and [one of the most] legally complex acquisitions in the almost 20 years of Tricor’s history,” Judy Wong, Tricor’s Hong Kong-based group general counsel, told China Business Law Journal. With this acquisition, Tricor expands its mainland China presence from five cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Chengdu) to eight cities (Tianjin, Xiamen, Dalian, Qingdao, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Fuzhou and Ningbo).

RFDY is a Hong Kong-based provider of integrated corporate and business services. It provides corporate and business services to mainland Chinese corp-orates to support their outbound investment activities, including cross-border M&A transactions, overseas capital market transactions and other direct outbound investments, and entity incorporation and renewal, and accounting and company secretarial services. It also provides corporate and business services to Chinese entrepreneurs seeking administrative support for their family offices.

“Traversing the cross-border nature of the deal, with inherent conceptual differences between the PRC and common law legal systems affecting contractual interpretation and construction, presented its own unique challenges,” said Wong.

The key to making the deal happen was ensuring the parties came to a consensus on the terms of the acquisition and bridging the gaps in the interpretation of legal issues. “With deals as big as this, the negotiation period took many months with very high stakes involved,” she said.