Hong Kong Partner Named Among Asia’s Top 15 Capital Markets Lawyers

Asian Legal Business (ALB) has honored Hong Kong partner Benjamin Carale among its 2022 Top 15 Capital Markets Lawyers List. The list recognizes leading lawyers in Asia who continue to impact the market through their deals’ complexity, breadth, and significance.

To compile the list, ALB conducts background research and interviews with nominees’ clients and peers, selecting the winning candidates according to key evaluation criteria.

ALB selected Carale for this year’s list based on his leadership on several landmark transactions, including advising BPI Capital and UBS as joint bookrunners on AREIT’s PHP13.6 billion Philippine Stock Exchange IPO. The transaction marked the first real estate investment trust (REIT) IPO in the Philippines — just eight months after REITs became viable in the country. This paved the way for a wave of REIT IPOs in the Philippines in 2021, including those for Filinvest REIT Corp. (FILREIT), RL Commercial REIT (RCR) and Megaworld REIT (MREIT), which Latham also advised on.

Latham advises on a full spectrum of corporate transactional and finance matters in the Philippines, including major inbound and outbound investments, landmark capital markets transactions, and sophisticated project financings. Chambers Asia Pacific 2022 ranks Latham’s Philippines Practice as Band 1 for both Corporate & Finance and Projects, Infrastructure & Energy.