• Profile
• Experience
• Accolades

Helen Yeo was Managing Partner of Rodyk & Davidson LLP from November 2002 to December 2010. She assumed the role immediately after HelenYeo & Partners, founded by her in 1992, merged with Rodyk & Davidson in November 2002.

As Managing Partner during that period, she set clear strategic directions for Rodyk and ensured the execution. This included regional expansion, which Helen had established a track record of from her days at HelenYeo & Partners. She also implemented service quality policies, risk management control and conflict issues evaluations relating to not only legal conflicts but also business conflicts.

Helen is often consulted by clients when they are seeking the advice of a lawyer with good judgment and practical outlook to give an assessment of situations before they make important decisions. Her services are often drawn on to assist clients to negotiate complex transactions or to make an offer on a mediation or settlement.

Helen is a veteran of the legal industry with 36 years of experience in several major legal practice areas. She has extensive experience in regional transactions and investments. Under her leadership, partners in the firm undertook major projects in the 1990s such as Wuxi-Singapore Industrial Park (China), Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park (Vietnam), Sanlin Township project (China) and Raffles City project (Shanghai, China). She had advised on the financing of projects with Singapore interests in China, Vietnam and Myanmar.

Helen has advised on major property acquisitions and disposals, some involving joint ventures, put and call options, sharing of facilities and co-development of property developments. In 2007 she led and negotiated 10 large corporate real estate transactions where teams of partners in Rodyk's Real Estate, Construction, Finance and Corporate Practice Groups provided the breadth and depth of expertise required by major global property funds making acquisitions in Singapore. The acquisitions for the funds included 8 Shenton Way, previously called Temasek Tower (price of S$1.039 billion), 78 Shenton Way, 77 Robinson Road, 112 Robinson Road, a block of strata floors in Springleaf Tower, 2 blocks of apartments in project called Cascadia, land for development previously known as Emerald Mansion and the land on which Asia Square Towers One and Two are being developed (the two towers making up the largest property project in Singapore at over S$5 billion).

Helen's banking and finance experience includes not only loans transactions but also advising on debt restructuring, takeout financing, insider trading issues on the exercise of a power of sale over shares, competing creditors' claims, insolvency, receiverships and enforcement issues.

In her corporate practice, she advised on mergers and acquisitions, investment and industrial projects, such as several chemical projects on Jurong Island requiring the complex sharing of industrial facilities. She has advised on company law issues including reconstruction, reduction of capital, minority rights, interested persons transactions and other prohibited transactions.

In addition to her portfolio of corporate and finance matters, Helen also had a portfolio of litigation matters from 1974 to 1995, including appearing before the Court of Appeal on a good number of occasions, in corporate law, commercial law and banking law cases. Her major cases included:

• a company law case before the Privy Council, London;
• a landmark case representing the liquidators of Lin Securities against about a dozen banks involving issues of floating charges and priorities of securities;
• a banking and company law case, involving a sale and repurchase of shares in Orchard Hotel by the client, Banque Paribas (now merged into BNP Paribas), where the liquidators of Pan-Electric failed to invalidate the sale by unsuccessfully alleging an invalid security.

Helen started law practice in 1974 after graduating from the University of Singapore that year. She was admitted to the Singapore Bar in January 1975 and began her legal career at Chor Pee & Hin Hiong, which was renamed Chor Pee & Company in 1978. After spending 18 years at the firm, she founded HelenYeo & Partners, which ceased to exist in November 2002 when it forged a merger of equals with Rodyk & Davidson, then 141 years old.