Doug Betts joins McMillan’s Hong Kong office

Doug Betts joins McMillan’s Hong Kong office

McMillan LLP is pleased to announce that Doug Betts, the current President and Chief Executive Officer of Sunwah International, will be joining the firm’s China Practice Group, effective July 20, 2015.

Doug will join initially as a Strategic Advisor, and following completion of the registration process with the Hong Kong Law Society, as Senior Counsel. He will work out of our Hong Kong office.

While maintaining his existing relationship with the Sun Wah Group, a longstanding client of the firm, Doug will serve as the firm’s resident counsel in Hong Kong. In his role Doug, will continue to focus on the group’s three main business objectives: outbound investment from Asia into Canada, inbound investment into China (with the support of Yanwen Le in the Montreal office), and listings on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Doug has been associated with Sunwah International and its subsidiaries for close to 20 years. He was appointed a director in August 1995 and sat on Sunwah’s board with Robert Fung of Crystallex, a former client of the firm.

Prior to his position as CEO of Sunwah International, Doug founded Kingsway Capital of Canada (KCC) where he was the CEO from 2001 until 2008. He also founded and was the initial CEO of Golden China Resources Ltd., a gold mining and production company that operated in China and was affiliated with KCC from 2004 to 2006. China Gold was also a client of McMillan. In October 1997, Doug co-founded Borealis Funds Management Ltd. where he served until 2001 as Managing Director responsible for sourcing and structuring investment transactions. Before joining Borealis, Doug was a partner with Torys LLP, a Canadian law firm, where he practiced business law with an emphasis on securities and real estate.

Doug’s transition to private practice was only made possible with the support of the Sun Wah Group and its Chair, Dr. Jonathan Choi. Our relationship with Dr. Choi spans two decades, with the beginning of that relationship starting in 1995, when we took the parent company public in Canada. We see Doug’s move to McMillan as an outgrowth of that relationship, and are extremely proud to have Doug be a member of the firm.