Investments from China in the United States have increased at a nice rate in 2013 and this has caused Chinese law firms to help investors navigate the legal waters in the United States, according to China Daily.
Yingke Law Firm
“This opening reflects the importance that Yingke places on its business relationships in the US, the Midwest, and the city of Chicago specifically,” Yingke said in a statement. “Yingke helps its clients to understand how important local governments are to creating success in Chinese business.”
Yingke operates its headquarters in Beijing and it has 14 other locations outside of China in addition to the offices in Chicago and New York. In China, the firm has 21 offices.
“It’s been a fruitful year for us,” Yingke managing partner Zoe Qiao said in an interview with China Daily. “This year has been a relatively busy year because we have a lot more expansion, and it’s been a good time for cross-border transaction.”
Qiao noted that investors from China took part in quite a bit of outbound investment in the United States this past year. Qiao said that the amount was very close to what the country had been doing with its economic restructuring.
“A lot of Chinese companies make the step to go outbound, but the rate of failure is really high,” Qiao said. “From previous examples, we saw a lot of publicly-listed Chinese companies get delisted due to SEC compliance and accounting issues.”
Muddy Water, a research firm, said back in October that NQ Mobile, a mobile security company, was a ‘massive fraud.’ This caused the company’s stock to plummet immensely. The report came after multiple scandals in accounting involving Chinese companies that were involved in business in the United States. This led to IPOs from China to sit at a stalemate for two years.
“We saw record loss from these Chinese companies due to the fact that they’re not familiar with business operations in the US and not familiar with the legal system,” Qiao said. “It’s been ‘muddy water’ for these Chinese companies, but they’re learning their lessons – they’re learning hard lessons through these failures and people realize that having a professional service team is really important.”
Qiao made a point to note that companies from China must be familiar with the rules of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission if they want to operate effectively. Qiao also said that the companies must make sure their accounting practices meet all of the SEC standards.