Lawrence Hu graduated from Taxation College of Yangzhou University, East China University of Politics and Law and University of Virginia with LL.B. and LL.M.
Before joining Jingtian & Gongcheng, Lawrence has worked for Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People’s Court, Ping’an Investment Bank, Richard & Co. and MWE China Law Offices for more than 10 years. Lawrence mainly focuses onthe areas of corporate and tax, litigation and compliance and etc.
In the corporate area, Lawrence has provided full-cycle service to either companies or investors or funds on matters of start-up, ESOP, investment and finance, merge & acquisition and IPOs. In addition, Lawrence also represent either the onshore companies or offshore companies in their investment, operation and merge & acquisition.
In the tax area, Lawrencehas covered almost all types of tax (VAT / CIT / IIT / DTAand etc.) and diverse industries (FMCG / Manufacturing / Financial / Software and Hi-Tech / Distribution / Pharmacyand etc.).Lawrence often advise multinational companies on their investments and operations and high-net-worth individuals on their asset planning. His tax education background facilitates his communication with the tax authorities and he has created a record of visiting seven tax authorities in nine days.
In the compliance area, his combined background will help identify irregular accounting treatments and further trace back to the underlying bribe acts and even other illegal payments in the investigation and design compliant accounting and tax treatments to avoid non-compliance charges in the internal control work; further, in the defense work, his litigation experience will be useful in the collection of evidence materials and communication with and defend against enforcement authorities.
In the litigation area, he is familiar with the judges’ thoughts adjudicating cases and comparatively easily make the judges accept his legal opinion. Further, as compared to other litigators, Lawrence is one of a few lawyers who have accumulated solid expertise in evidence law and he is invariably able to employ his evidence expertise to lead the case to a result in favour of his client.
Leveraging his knowledge and experience in law, tax and accounting, Lawrence offers advice and solutions from multiple perspectives, resulting in a more comprehensive and practical approach than any anchored on a legal or a tax perspective alone.
Lawrence is often invited along with officers from enforcement authorities to lecture tax & compliance-related topics on a great variety of seminars. His speech’s authority and practicability was widely recognized by the attendees.
Lawrence was admitted to PRC bar in 2001.
Lawrence is fluent in both Mandarin and English.
Corporate & Tax
• Successfully represented Wal-Mart in solving outstanding tax issues inherited from the previous owner of its newly acquired Trust-Mart (which involved communication with 107 stores in 29 cities and nearly 20 tax authorities throughout China) as well as designing tax practice standards for the subsidiaries for compliance purposes
• In the well-known dispute between Danone & Wahaha (“达娃之争”), successfully represented Danone in dealing with its officers’ IIT issues (including Mr. Qin Peng, chairman of Danone China) and in the tax investigation of Robust, Danone’s subsidiary. All tax opinions offered were well accepted by the tax authorities
• Successfully represented McDonald’s in its self-investigation required by State Administration of Taxation, including the provision of tax opinions, preparation of feedback forms and internal control policies
• Successfully represented Mars in its integration of its global IT resources after its acquisition of Wrigley and Royal Canin, and in the restructuring of its sales model and employment model in China, which involved 36 branch companies or branch offices around China
• Successfully represented a leading pet food supplier in its settlement with certain tax authorities regarding the back-filing of IIT (reaching RMB 5,000,000) incurred for certain expatriates. Through his efforts on the application of certain articles, the fines and late payment surcharges (amounting to RMB 2,500,000, half of the tax payable) were totally waived
• Successfully represented MTS in its solution of various tax issues in connection with its acquisition of SANS. This included tax analysis on acquisition mode and acquisition entity as well as on the pricing of acquired assets, among other issues
Litigation & Compliance
• While working for Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People’s Court, participated in the trial of about 200 cases as a judge clerk, including contract disputes, IPR infringement acts, real estate disputes, personal injury disputes and other categories of cases
• Represented a successful business woman in a dispute against her younger sister, which amounts to 300 million and involves around 20 companies inbound and outbound, by providing legal analysis and designing the defense strategy
• Represented a leading software supplier in a litigation against one of its anti-piracy agent, which claimed more than RMB10 million service fee by providing a fake evidence; by delicate cross-examining and applying local judicial interpretation, the court dismissed the evidence and ruled against the agent
• Successfully represented a leading sportswear company in its dispute settlement with its key contract processor in Mainland China. By creatively designing a settlement arrangement, the client directly reached a settlement agreement with the processor’s subsidiary and would not need to bear any liability with the processor itself and successfully limit the risk of its IPR being infringed further
• Successfully represented a Shanghai company in its technology transfer contract dispute with a subsidiary controlled by China National Petroleum. The representation opinion was well accepted by the Guangdong High Court of Second Instance and pushed the counterparty to settle this case although the latter obtained an award in its favour in the first instance
• Successfully represented a leading laboratory equipment supplier in its labour dispute with some key employees elicited by its competitor. By creatively designing and implementing the evidence-collection strategy to prove that employees concerned had actually worked for the latter, the court ruled in favour of the client and limited the competitor further eliciting employees from the client
• Representing a leading food supplier in a well-known food safety case for criminal defense purpose, including analysis of legal grounds and evidence collection
• Conducted embezzlement and counterfeiting investigation for a leading global manufacturer engaging in extended-guaranty service to home appliance, which involved a targeted review of all electronically stored information and a criminal liability analysis
• Advised Wincor Nixdorf, a leading ATM provider, in its internal compliance review of its sales model from anti-commercial bribery perspective and helped it establish a new internal control system
• Advised a leading testing machine provider, in its internal compliance review of the target company’s business process from anti-bribery and FCPA perspectives after acquisition, and successfully mitigated the monetary amount and number of suspicious-non-compliant cases challenged by an auditing firm
• Advised a leading US electronics company in connection with its cooperation agreement with a state-owned research institute containing tourism arrangements from China’s anti-bribery and FCPA perspectives
• Advised Mars, a leading food supplier, in the review of its business model and transaction documents from multi-perspectives, such as anti-bribery law, competition law, tax law and etc
