Shirin Tang

“ The greatest fulfilment in my career is when I’m able to help clients find a balance between commercial realities and legal analysis to achieve their strategic objectives. I get a real thrill out of understanding what truly motivates the critical stakeholders and being able to anticipate the operational and financial consequences of each key decision.

Shirin has over 16 years of experience in private equity and M&A transactions in the United States, Southeast Asia and China and has a strong market reputation for complex and innovative transactions, with a particular focus on corporate real estate matters and cross-border club/consortium transactions across industries. Over the past few years, Shirin has led a number of award-winning transactions, with deal values in excess of US$1 billion each and US$30 billion in total. More broadly, Shirin also counsels GCs in relation to the key issues faced by their organizations in these rapidly evolving times, and is passionate about helping GCs find a balance between mitigating risk and protecting the brand while facilitating growth and creating value for their organizations.

Clients describe Shirin as “a standout attorney” and their “go-to lawyer for high value, high impact transactions,” noting that, “having her on our side of the table during the more contentious parts of the negotiations allowed us…to push back on a much larger counter party, gaining concessions while keeping the deal intact.”

In recognition of her ability to add real value to clients’ businesses, Asian Legal Business named Shirin one of their “40 Under 40” most outstanding private practice lawyers and in-house counsel in Asia in 2017 and Southeast Asia Woman Lawyer of the Year in 2018. She is also listed in Asia Business Law Journal's 2019 A List for Singapore.

In addition to her practice, Shirin serves as Managing Partner of Morrison & Foerster’s Singapore office. She is committed to the retention and advancement of women in the legal profession and is an active member of Morrison & Foerster’s Women’s Strategy Committee, which leads the Firm’s award-winning initiatives for its women lawyers.

Representative Experience

• A global strategic investor in its significant Series F investment in Gojek, a major Southeast Asia ride-hailing player valued in excess of US$10 billion.
• A leading Asian institutional investor in its ongoing investments in Grab Inc., a popular ride-hailing “Super App” in Southeast Asia valued at over US$14 billion.
• GLP Pte. Ltd. in its US$11.64 billion privatization, then the largest-ever private equity buyout of an Asian company by enterprise value. The transaction won multiple awards, including Asian Legal Business’s SE Asia Law Awards 2018: M&A Deal of the Year (Premium); The Asian Lawyer’s Asia Legal Awards 2018: M&A Deal of the Year: Southeast Asia; 2017 Global PERE Awards: Deal of the Year, Asia; and FinanceAsia’s 2017 Deal of the Year and Best Leveraged Finance Deal.
• Japan Tobacco International on its acquisition of the assets related to the tobacco business of Mighty Corporation for a total of US$936 million. This was one of the largest M&A deals by value in the Philippines in 2017.
• IndoSpace on the formation of IndoSpace Core, its US$1.2 billion joint venture with Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which will focus on acquiring and developing modern logistics facilities in India.