Teresa Ko

Freshfields Bruckhaus DeringerPartner

Teresa is Freshfields’ China Chairman and a founding partner of the firm’s Asia capital markets practice. Described as “an icon in the industry”, she is one of Hong Kong’s most acclaimed and respected corporate and securities lawyers. Over her career, Teresa has worked on multiple ground-breaking and first-of-a-kind transactions, helping numerous Chinese state-owned, privately-owned and international companies to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKSE), including advising on eight out of the ten largest IPOs that Hong Kong has ever seen. She has an equally impressive record on complex corporate mergers and takeovers, privatisations, joint ventures and corporate governance matters. Teresa has been an active and influential participant in Hong Kong’s meteoric rise as a global capital raising venue and the transformational changes in mainland China. Among her many public service appointments, Teresa currently serves as one of four co-Chairmen of the HKSE’s Listing Review Committee. She is a Deputy Chairman of the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC)’s Takeovers and Mergers Panel and served as a non-executive director of the SFC from 2012 to 2018. She is a vice-chair of the IFRS Foundation. In 2009, Teresa became the first female to chair the HKSE’s Listing Committee and leveraged her position to push for greater gender diversity on the boards of Hong Kong-listed companies and listing applicants. She has also championed gender diversity both within Freshfields and in the legal profession more widely. She was named in the global HERoes list of 100 Women Executives (part of the HERoes Women Role Model List) in 2019 and 2020.