Sandra Lu

Practice Areas

Retail Funds, Hedge Funds and Wealth Management, Financial Institutions, Mergers and Acquisitions

Career

Ms. Lu has extensive experience and expertise in asset management area. She acts as the legal counsel for leading Chinese and global financial institutions to set up the fund management companies in China to engage in retail and private fund management business. She acts for the legal advisor for hundreds of China domiciled funds for their funds raising and launch. Ms. Lu advised a large number of global asset managers for their QDLP and WFOE PFM business in China.

Personal

Ms. Lu has respectively obtained Bachelor Degree of Economic Law and Master Degree of International Economic Law and was PRC qualified in 2004. Ms. Lu worked in two reputable PRC law firms from 2002 to early 2009 and joined Llinks as a partner from March 2009. Currently Ms. Lu is the partner of Llinks responsible for securities investment funds and asset management practice.

Work Highlights

Ms. Lu has extensive experience and expertise in securities investment funds which are highly regulated by the CSRC (the “Fund”) and other types of products including the private funds and hedge funds.

In Funds area, Ms. Lu represented a large number of Chinese financial institutions like the commercial bank, insurance company, securities firm and trust company to set up the fund management company (the “FMC”) in China. Ms. Lu also represented over 15 global asset managers to set up the JV FMC in China including helping them to understand the regulatory environment of China, participating commercial negotiation with their Chinese partners, drafting the shareholders agreement and articles of association of the proposed JV FMC and preparing all application documents for JV FMC establishment and submitting to the CSRC. Ms. Lu also advised a large number of domestic and foreign financial institutions to acquire the stake the Chinese FMC.

The PRC counsel shall issue the formal legal opinion for each of the Fund launch according to the PRC Securities Investment Law, which is a part of the application package to be submitted to the CSRC. Ms. Lu and her team have advised over 1,500 Funds for their application to obtain CSRC’s approval. All such Funds include equity funds, fixed funds, bond fund, money market fund, LOF and ETF.

Ms. Lu is highly involved in the innovative Funds products in the Chinese market including providing the legislative advice to the regulator and the legal advice to the fund houses. The innovative Funds Ms. Lu advised on include the cross boarder EFT, cross market ETF, gold EFT, commodity ETF, principal guaranteed product, the publicly offered REITs, the publicly offered PE investment fund and the publicly offered leveraged investment product, etc..

In the meanwhile, with the development of the global investment capability of the Chinese FMCs, Ms. Lu acts as the legal advisor for a majority of the QDII Funds offered in China. In addition, Ms. Lu is very active in QDLP and QDIE initiatives respectively launched by Shanghai and Shenzhen. QDLP and QDIE products provide the opportunity for the Chinese investors to get a broader global exposure, and also the opportunity for the global asset managers to set up onshore WFOE entity to raise money directly from the Chinese investors.

QFII and RQFII are the main practice area of Ms. Lu as well. Ms. Lu assist the QFII and RQFII to apply for the Chinese license and quota, support their ongoing legal and compliance requirement and review their offshore offering documents from the PRC perspective.

Recently, Ms. Lu has been advising a number of HK fund managers for their MRF application with the CSRC and providing the ongoing legal and compliance services under MRF scheme.

Ms. Lu is often invited by regulators and self-disciplined funds association to provide legislative advice.