what we think

On 28 April 2011, Maarten Roos was invited to lecture to a group of 15 students of the Executive MBA program of Louvain University in Belgium. The Europeans were visiting Shanghai as part of an exchange program with Jiao Tong University, one of Shanghai’s top business schools.

Maarten focused on the challenges and opportunities of the Chinese legal environment to foreign businesses, while continuously referring to some of cases he handled during his 9 years advising foreign businesses operating in China. His lecture was organized around three broad topics:

• Foreign investment – the pros, cons and pitfalls to the various vehicles available to foreign companies for establishment in China.
• Dispute resolution – the greatest challenges and opportunities to resolving disputes in China through negotiation, arbitration and litigation.
• Intellectual property – the key to effectively and efficiently acquire, manage and enforce intellectual property rights in China.

The lecture was extremely well-received, with numerous questions raised both during and after the presentation. One participant commented: “The presentation was extremely informative, and the colorful case studies really livened it up.”

Maarten regularly provides lectures on the above and other topics of Chinese law and practice. He is also the author of Chinese Commercial Law: A Practical Guide (Kluwer Law, 2010), one of the most popular recent books dealing with legal challenges for foreign companies in China, and he has contributed to numerous other publications. For more information, please visit www.rplawyers.cn or email info@rplawyers.cn.