The managing partner of Morgan Lewis Stamford in Singapore was given a lifetime achievement award by Chambers and Partners yesterday.
Mrs Lee Suet Fern is the first female lawyer in the Asia-Pacific to receive this honour, conferred for her consistent contributions as a leading lawyer in the practice areas of banking, capital markets, corporate finance, and mergers and acquisitions.
Award winners are selected from among senior and well-established lawyers who have made a significant contribution to the market as a whole or to a particular practice area.
"Winning the award is a great honour. I am humbled to be selected from such a large pool of notable lawyers in the Asia-Pacific, and the fact that I am the first female lawyer to be recognised is a tribute to the many women lawyers now in the profession," she said.
Factors behind her award include her involvement in many ground- breaking corporate transactions over many years in the region.
Mrs Lee said: "Perhaps also the entrepreneurship that was involved in starting a new law firm some 16 years ago, growing it into a regional player, and our ground-breaking combination with Morgan Lewis that allowed us to fully service clients in all areas of Singapore practice as well as internationalising our Singapore firm."
The 2016 Chambers Asia-Pacific guide ranks Mrs Lee in Band 1 in both Chambers Asia-Pacific and Chambers Global guides in the Singapore corporate/mergers and acquisition category.
The guide, which is one of the world's largest circulating legal ranking publications, assesses law firms and individual lawyers in bands from 1 to 6, with 1 being the best.
Mrs Lee often advises major clients on acquisitions and reverse takeovers, including recently acting for United Fiber System on its reverse takeover of Golden Energy Mines. She represented IT services firm Infosys in its US$120 million (S$162 million) acquisition of San Francisco-based Kallidus.
Mrs Lee also served as a board member of various publicly listed companies in Singapore and globally. She currently serves as director on the boards of global Fortune 100 companies AXA and Sanofi.
Other winners of the Chambers Asia-Pacific Awards yesterday included Allen & Gledhill for "Domestic Law Adviser of the Year". It had acted as Singapore counsel for Avago Technologies in the US$37 billion acquisition of Broadcom Corporation.
Clifford Chance nabbed the "International Law Adviser of the Year" award.
