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Jessica: It might never end up in court. It might never end up in arbitration, but clients use these kind of different ways of gathering information to help them make the decisions that they need. Cause there many of our clients using information that began to, to help them settle
Mavis: on, always remember the rush and the excitement of finding out the modus operandi or complex fraud,
Jessica: whether the production plant is still running, whether or not how many workers are coming in and out, whether their sales contracts are being honored.
Just to see. It's already been hollered out.
Art: Welcome everyone to another exciting episode of China business law podcast. Today, we're going to talk about how companies get ready for litigation. And today I also have with me a special cohost Iris UN assistant GC at Fosun pharma. Fushi.
Iris: Hello, everyone. Hi, glad to meet you here again. I think.
Art: Yeah, exactly.
So the audience may recall that Iris was on an earlier episode of the show this year as well. And she was just so good in that discussion that we had to invite her back now as a host this time.
Iris: Thank you. Thank you, art for inviting me here again, and the, just a shots introductions and myself as maybe you all heard about Paulson pharmaceutical plus a farmer is a stock NH stock listed pharmaceutical company, and we do a lots of investments.
And then we do a lot of practical like licensing and the license outs for the pharmaceutical. Yeah, but just as we speak art and before we start, I really want to seek your advice. I want to know, have you ever been headache for litigations? And it sometimes becomes nightmare to our in-house lawyers when we find a lot of the cross-border cases.
And then when we start the case, when we will find a lot of counterparties are just gone and some are just a gunk insolvency before we start the case, it's really headache and pain points for us. Have you ever encountered.
Art: I've been pretty fortunate when I was in house, we had very little litigation, a little bit on, on IP infringement, but for the most part, we were pretty, pretty lucky, at least in our, when I was in Asia Pacific handling it, that part of the region for the company.
I think I know back in the headquarters in north America, there was much more of that, but it was always there as something we knew we might have to deal with. And so you have. And I think that's part of that's exactly why we're going to have this episode today is it's about getting ready for litigate.
Iris: Yes. I come to realize that this kind of litigation management is not only a problem for our in-house lawyers and a lot of our executives and a lots of our entrepreneurs. They are beginning to realize how important it is to be ready and to be prepared before some litigation. And I just wondering sometime like how we can take very practical or cost conscious ways that we can deal with this inevitable disputes.
Sometimes if this is just a headache for us. So I'm really seeking for your
Art: health. Iris, we have the perfect guest today. So we have two guests, two partners from control. For those of you who don't know control risk is a global specialist risk consultants. And we have Mavis tan is a senior partner in control, risks, compliance, forensics, and intelligence practice.
And we have Jessica Piman is a partner and head of business intelligence for Asia Pacific and both are based in Hong Kong. Welcome Mavis. Welcome Jessica. Thank
Jessica: you.
Art: Yeah. And maybe in turn, each of you could tell us a little bit more about yourselves and your practice. Let's start first with.
Mavis: Yeah, thank you for having me art and Iris. So I lead our forensics practice for greater China and north Asia. I am a forensic accountant by training and a large part of my practice.
Focuses on helping corporations and high net worth individuals respond to complex financial disputes, including both commercial matters and also allegations of fraud corruption when he laundering. And I have personally provided expert evidence for use in legal proceedings in numerous jurisdictions, including Hong Kong,
Jessica: Singapore and New York.
And Jessica, I run the business intelligence practice. Then we have a 70 person team around the region with a big office in Shanghai and we help clients make decisions before deals. So we gather information to support their due diligence process compliance and integrity programs. And we gather information off the frauds to determine kind of the circumstances around those.
And also we gather information to support disputes and litigation.
Iris: Excellent exciting. Yeah. So can I just ask all you started his career in how you enter the, as doing our investigation?
Jessica: Maybe
Mavis: show. So for me, I fell into it. So I moved to Hong Kong. Now about 19, 20 years ago from the UK. And when I moved to Hong Kong, I was just finishing off my training contract as a chartered accountant. And there were only two fems in Hong Kong at the time who could sign off for me. And one offered an audit, statutory audit position.
And the other author affords the accounting and insolvency position. So for me, it was a no-brainer and I went with the forensic accounting position.
Iris: Oh, interesting. How about just feel I did something
Jessica: else for a while and then that wasn't really panning out for me. And I went to a dinner party before.
Oh, and in 2003 or many terrible dinner party, and I met somebody at that identifies you, who does this work? And they made it sound absolutely amazing. And then, so I upsold my Chinese language skills really shamelessly and said, if you ever need a Chinese research and let me know. And then I'm very lucky that I got a cool couple of weeks later.
And then. I realize it probably should have been quite modest about my Chinese and it works so hard to try and do my research. And I, oh, that starts my career to a really great Malaysian accountant actually, who really helped me a lot. And I would, and he would help me with the vocabulary as I was doing my job.
So he was basically doing two. His own and mine, but that's how I, that's how I landed in this business. I hadn't known about it before. And, and I feel really lucky that I found it. Okay.
Iris: Yeah, I find it amazing too. The biggest, it's quite a different from our legal practitioners, from what we do. And sometimes I think you are just like magicians, just snap your fingers.
And I say, oh, I want to know about this shareholder, or I want to know about this asset. And then boom, you just come out with a very fancy report and tell us everything. Like they are in there some exciting moments for your career when you, I think you've been in this career for a really long time. Right.
And sometimes it could be a very exciting or risk taking or even like dangerous. I don't know. It
Art: must be quite, quite a lot of drama, dramatic stories. I'm sure you could share. Yeah.
Mavis: Yeah. So I think in this line of work, that's never really a dull moment. And as for exciting moments, I think there are many, I think for me personally, I had to spend two consecutive five days in a Bermuda for a large dispute that I was doing at the time.
So that was pretty memorable for me and the friendships that I have built to with our legal teams, other expert teams, just working on that case. I think that. Pretty Memorial and a PDX siting. And I always remember the rush and the excitement of finding out the modus operandi on a complex fraud. I remember a survey on a listing fraud quite a few years ago now in Hong Kong.
I think the moment where we worked out, how the company inflated its revenue and profits, that was quite a big aha moment and very, really satisfying. And I'm sure Jessica has so many stories to tell.
Jessica: I actually I'm embarrassed. I don't have the ready, cooked story, but I think what I love about this is that there is, I love that Saddam moment actually, and the kind of intellectual exercise of trying to unpick complex structures and complex scenarios.
And often you spend a lot of time spinning your wheels, trying to get to. Some kind of some silver bullet, which is gonna make the whole thing like this magic box kind of come apart. And sometimes we find that and it's really great. It's really great. It's such a good feeling. And whether that's you find who the beneficial learner is, you've been hiding behind various different proxies, or whether that you find out who had the Paris shares or the factory was a false front, whatever that is, there's often this great kind of reveal and that's really compelling.
And conversely. Yeah, learning to live with the frustration of sometimes not being able to find that too is really maddening and having to also learn to live with kind of ambiguity of information. So not being able to get slam dunk bits of information that are really going to be like reduced produce and case closed, circling around those different things and getting a balance of them, but it keeps us interested.
Iris: Yeah, fascinating. And I'm thinking some of our audience, maybe not still quite familiar with your service and what do you do. So can you let us know? And that's why I do like companies or lawyers they would seek help from you. And like typically at what stage that they wouldn't seek help from you or they would asking for you.
Mavis: Sure Jessica, maybe I'll make a start and then you can jump in. I think clients come to us ultimately, because we are able to provide information and expertise then can, that can ultimately influence the outcome of the dispute, whether or not it's already in legal procedures. And as soon as when they come to us, I think it's route the lifecycle of a dispute.
So for example, during claims formulation, they will, they would typically come to us to investigate the subject matter of a dispute, particularly if there's been a fraud or a breach of a contractual term, or if there's a technical accounting breach. Or any other conduct requiring investigation or an early assessment of financial evaluation type issues and to assess in what are the information and evidential gaps and how they could get them true to informing their litigation strategy.
So a lot of what Jessica's team does in terms of counterparty assessment and sort of 50 PSU type assessment. And then at the discovery stage, we're typically asked to assist with e-discovery. So in the evidence collection, hosting, searching review and ultimately our production during litigation, also in the analysis of evidence and in supporting counsel for some applications or specific discovery of specific documents or specific classes of information that's relevant to the proceedings.
And then even at trial, for example, myself and I would provide expert evidence to support counsel and also help them during cross examination of the opposing parties, experts, my e-discovery and technology colleagues might provide expert evidence on a forensic digital forensics matter, or even during witness research.
So for example, in a recent. Large and complex dispute, lots of witnesses. We were asked to do research on all these witnesses, that credibility of a history, just for any bits of information that was useful to council in forming the examination. And then of course, as I read, you might be familiar with. And we are typically also brought in during the enforcement and recovery stage in for me.
So asset investigations, I say identification and also sometimes to support almost insolvency appointments in Hong Kong, connecting us. I don't receive us over a secured assets or liquidators Jessica. I don't know whether I miss anything there. I
Jessica: think one way to look at it is that the component parts of dispute support, we can.
GABA and analyze and collect information that is provided to the clients, their information that the client knows about. And then often that will go a long way to answering the questions or being able to support legal strategy. But on occasion, there is also a need to gather information externally, quietly discreetly, which is going to outside.
Way of gathering additional kind of either data points or circumstantial or other types of evidence to support legal case. And often that is pre dispute and often it can be related to contentious issues of all different scriptures. It might never end up in court. It might never end up in arbitration, but clients use these kind of different ways of getting information to help them make the decisions that they need.
And we might go on to talk about what those component parts look like as well in terms of the life cycle of the dispute. But I think definitely in this region. There is a disinclination to see things through, to the bitter end of litigation proceedings or arbitration proceedings. And there, many of our clients use the information that we gather to help them settle.
And that can be through forensic analysis, or it can be use of gathering circumstantial information relating to the counter parties and how they respond to each other or how they know each other and what their background is. So there's lots of myriad uses for the information that we're able to gather and analyze for.
Iris: Yeah, I think some of us might be familiar with general business intelligence or due diligence conducted by lawyers. So what do you think is the biggest difference from this intelligence or due diligence?
Jessica: This is a really great question because actually. I think we are inclined to, I think it can often be much more difficult in a contentious situation because oftentimes the counterparty has deliberately hidden money or put things on arms reach, or try to obfuscate ownership or their involvement or use of close counter parties or that.
So they deliberately tried to hide those things. They deliberately to make it difficult to detect or understand what's happening as if that makes sense. Harder because also it may be that there are less people who can tell us what happened. It may be that there are only three people who were party to a decision or only one person who was party to a decision.
And so we have less points of entry sometimes in terms of our investigation. Whereas with due diligence, it can also be very difficult in certain circumstances, but it's a more routine matter. There is. If we are doing our research, it's very unlikely that we're going to trip a wire. That's going to. Upset the subject of the due diligence, or it may be now.
In the old days, people were very upset in emerging markets. If they felt that they were being diligence in kind of an integrity or reputational way. But these days, the sophistication of the businesses that we're looking at and our clients looking at both ways, from a China perspective, coming into China or going out China new there's less sensitivity around that.
Some people may not like the notion of having a reputation check, run on them. They in most instances don't have anything to hide it's okay. Whereas in disputes are part of that. Being able to ask questions and gather information related to very focused issues can be difficult because they've deliberately been put beyond arm's length.
Art: If I can jump in, I think that's a fair, is that a fair characterization? Whether it's. For litigation preparation for litigation or due diligence for an M and a transaction and research on the counterparties and so forth. That's for the lawyer for lawyers involved, we're more obviously focused first and foremost on the documents that are provided to us.
Part of that due diligence process, we're looking at contracts and changing control provisions. And so we have our own checklist and we have lots of questions we raised, but I feel like for both, for on the litigation and the MNA side, there's a. Where lawyers can only just keep asking questions, but we may not have that.
We, someone needs to really dig and get the answers to those questions and the clients, probably not sometimes in the best position or even wants to do that, or even be so inclined to do that. But in the back of their head, they know they need to do that. And I imagine that's where you guys come in and working with lawyers.
For example, what
Jessica: I would say is. The terms that we hang our hat on for this profession, a very broad term said you didn't admit. Actually it does us no favors because it covers so many things. And so one person's due diligence is, can be quite different, but from role in that we have mostly fourth leg of the table.
So after the lawyers have done their legal diligence and there's being commercial diligence and there's being financial diligence, we are the integrity reputational piece that checks everything is purports to be and say, we're sense, checking all of the information that you've already been provided.
And it's true. On occasion that may not be required. There may be a regulatory need for it for a kind of very light check, or there may be such issues or unanswered questions that you've already put to the counterparty or to the subject that you just need a little bit more to be able to sense check whether those things are a nominal or an issue.
So I don't know, possibly I think the outside-in analogy is a good one because often the kicking at the time is helpful, whether that's for due diligence or whether that's. Dispute support there's information that you can get from on the ground, which is going to be different from the information that's provided to you in the course of negotiations or business transaction.
Iris: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Mavis: Yeah. I think if I think it using an analogy, I think we, the way we are like a compliment to what the lawyers do. So not so much replacing what the voice do in terms of due diligence or using arts example in M and a context. So, what we do is very much giving more information, putting more meat on the bones in terms of the information that you get from documents.
So for example, brought in quite often on a compliance due diligence matters. Where does a bribery or corruption perspective where questioning and interviews, the lawyers, they detect red flags around. How is this company? And whether there's any impropriety involved, but how do they really know without going on the ground?
And so we have brought in actually go on the ground and really look at the transactions and to fill in the information gaps that you can really get from just looking at the documents and really just testing what people are telling you, whether it's right during the, are they reflected in the actual business practices?
Iris: Yeah, I can recall a MNA case. When I practiced as a firm lawyer, that's a, we are helping our clients to do form a transaction documents and the concept project they would like to because we require them to provide some security assets. And then we want someone of them to be a, some kind of guaranteed.
For us. So the conduct body just provide us with some companies that's all around the world. And it, they said that they are very valuable and we don't know. And from this point that I think our lawyers, we are really at a loss because we can't tell our clients whether the guarantees or securities they provide is sufficient enough or whether they are really true.
All this companies are just a non. So at this point, so I think we suggest our clients to involve a researcher or professional researcher, and we get this problems now. And again, getting back to the litigation, I think a very close case in that we see of a cross-border litigation. That is a lawsuit case.
We have concept parties over six countries and some comes apart. Just as we discussed in the beginning of the show that they are just even where we locate some of the assets in China or in Hong Kong. But the party that the entity itself is gone and some artists, they, they, they are bankrupt and nothing, or no one is left in the company.
So even if. Uh, apply for big budget, or we would like to file a big lawsuit to them, but when you find nothing in behind them, and it becomes very difficult for us to make decisions that whether we go forward or we just cut it off, I think it's very important before we launch a lawsuit and we take a.
Jessica: Yeah, I think there too. I think it depends if there's a, I think there are lots of motivations for dispute and whether things are worth kind of seeing through their end. But I increasingly we have, especially external counsel who are advising in-house, who proposing to do a fit to SU study where they will look to see what.
Kind of what is left on the table. What, whether the production plant is still running webinar, how many workers are coming in and out whether their sales contracts are being honored, whether they're delivering whatever widgets they make, or just to see if it's already been hollered out, if it's already like super distressed and there's a whole stack of other creditors and with prior claim, and you can see that kind of as a history of not honoring these obligations or restructuring to put them beyond arm's length.
It impacts on the decisions you'll make about whether it's merited to spend the money, to take it to cool. Yeah. I think there's also, there's a stock line in our business where, and it's pretty hackneyed now, but you go to conferences like compliance conferences, or you'll often hear people like me saying it's much cheaper to do due diligence than.
To do asset tracing and try and get your money back after.
Iris: Yes. So some, yeah, some big litigations nowadays, they just strike our executives. Like my boss says they heard about DD global the case, and they heard about the lucky in case there will be wow. Like it can be a nightmare and sometimes, and the, to a company.
So do you feel this kind of challenging is becoming one more severe for our companies is some disputes. It's just that. A unexpected crisis sometimes for the company.
Jessica: Why don't I go first on? I think, yes. I think that we have all heard. And just with regards to China, particularly there is a not uncommon scenario where, and historically this.
Cropped up a lot. It's not an uncommon scenario. Our joint venture has gone wrong and a joint venture partner will have lost control of its China operations. And, and whether that means that they've lost control of the chops or, and then the legal dance to try and remedy that is a long and torturous one.
Is that any worse now than. He knew it ever has been? No, I don't think so. Hats it's accentuated during COVID just because people couldn't travel and they couldn't meet together. So if there are fractures prior to this kind of last year, Those might've become more pronounced. And I think what that can mean is that the companies find themselves there may have been its givings, or there may have been issues that they weren't really happy with, but that can suddenly go from zero to a hundred miles an hour.
And turn into a crisis situation where they may have. And I think it plays particularly for multi-nationals with operations in China, it says not atypical situation and they might not have that top management on the ground, or they may not be sure who they can trust to scenario plan that. Out of that to minimize any impacts because kind of visit the local government and how to handle those relationships or possibly the local police and the judiciary.
Sometimes companies are neither prepared, no really willing to engage with that because they haven't had to previously, or they hadn't anticipated it. We've found that we've been drawn into scenarios like that. And my name ABC's team has worked on there's a lot, but whether that is more accentuated now, I don't think so.
There's definitely more restructuring where people are looking at their supply chain and changing the location of factories or location of kind of certain parts of their supply chain. And that's going to impact on China. And their presence in China. And it may mean that they need to move things around, which compose requires a certain degree of kind of special management and crisis scenario planning.
I think you
Mavis: have
Iris: something to add on that.
Mavis: Um, yeah, so I think the key takeaway, because we've seen that so many times. Particularly in promoting nationals, operating in mainland China. What starts out as a fairly benign type dispute. It could be with a dispute with a supplier or what people, what the com the multinationals initially think it's impropriety a concept of interest with the one employee quickly escalates into a much, much larger scale problems.
Where it's not one employees, a whole group of employees and quite high up in the organizations. It's not just one supplier because there's so much confusion going on in the supply chain, both internally between amongst employees and between employees and third parties, that it's a much, much bigger problem.
So I think it's important for companies to have that at the back of their mind. They have to. Look at the bigger, the wider context of a specific particular dispute and not write it off as being in a discrete part of the.
Iris: Yeah, it's come to me. I question that because currently we are using a lots of digital data and every company has digitalized. So with such big wall of data or of inflammation, and that's helping with your investigation lessors, or it makes things more challenging. I
Mavis: think there, there is both advantages and disadvantages to having large volumes of data.
So like you say, Digital age, much of the evidence in a dispute would be in electronic form. This data not only resides in a company's assets, so not only company's computers and infrastructure, but a lot of cases, also personal devices, which brings about a whole Roth of issues with accessing that data and using it in the context.
Litigation, I think companies and the council need to think about Chinese data, privacy rules, data security laws in the jurisdictions in which the dispute is happening, which of course impact on the ability to use evidence located in China. For example, for proceedings in foreign courts last year, you're probably aware I was an armed with a new Chinese data security law.
For example, there's a lot of consent around you, whether or not data located in China can be used for. Or in Coatesville foreign proceedings. And I think at a more granular level companies need to start thinking about their own policies relating to documented data retention policies and the company's ability to access that data.
So I think there are quite a lot of complex issues surrounding that. The other area. There's also just the volume. I think of potentially relevant data, especially for the species that span many years, I've dealt with many joint venture disputes and sometimes if a dispute spends over 30 years, so the sheer volume and non electronic or hard copy data can be quite staggering and there must be a way companies, council need to find a way to.
Systematically identify, review, organize all this potentially relevant documents and information and be able to produce it in a manageable way. And I think that's where discovery is a very powerful and useful tool just in terms of creating a proper audit trail for evidence that has been collected in reviewing and analyzing that and to support council generally in that.
Process, and I suppose the other technology related issue. How do you analyze data in a cost efficient manner when there's just so much to deal with? How do you even explain that data to a court in a dispute? And that's where we've seen increasing use of data analytics just to most often, you're just to help visualize a specific factual matters that are hard to explain just on paper or.
And also to contextualize complex relationships between parties or transactions. Yes, I reached, I don't know whether that is sufficiently answers your question on, on, on your potential challenges or advantages with things being so digital and all these tools available out.
Iris: Yeah. So one point you mentioned also is the point I'm interested in that because currently the privacy problem is like very, how can they say that currently and in China litigation process, I don't think there was some difficulties because when we submit about the sources of a person of his, or her accounts of the assets of the real estate, the court, I think they were recognized at.
Take it as a, like a preserve preservation way or something like that. And the difficulties that in other litigations, because we had a strange case, we heard about the quarters because the count of how they, they claimed and that's the source we gained, it's not legal. So they asked us to provide the, how you get this resources.
And when you presented to the court, the courts filled, if you cannot justify that the resource is legitimate. So they say we will not help you to see such as the assets or see such persons accounts. So in terms of that, can you comment on that or do you have any advice on.
Mavis: Yeah, I think that is an issue that comes up a lot in, I think courts in common law jurisdictions, if a party, or for example, if a party is going to apply for injunction or freezing order against specific assets and they will have to demonstrate to the court how it is that information on those assets came about.
How did you obtain that information as UCI was in, or whether it's been obtained by legal means? I'm sure Jessica will have lots to say on this point because. Based statements are produced. And for individuals in saying, look, this person has accounts in all these jurisdictions in China. The question is how did you obtain those bank statements?
It's one thing, if the mistake was wrong, his company issued device. For example, if it was a errand employee and say we have. Legitimately access this information. It's quite another thing to say. I've had some private investigators do something to guarantee they paid someone for this information. Jessica, do you have any more insight to, how is it possible to use information in a legitimate manner?
So we think.
Jessica: What is admissible and a good sense of what is admissible in court and what is it? The miscibility of different countries and systems. There's some variation there. And I say, for instance, if we're helping clients where the us litigation, then there is an assumption that unless we have kind of documents like chopped documents that we've been able to find during the course of the investigation, there's going to be very little that they can actually use in court, unless it's part of their discovery process.
We see now also is very difference between arbitration and education. Say what information is visible. So if we, as investigators or as a business intelligence team are doing discrete interviews and gathering anecdotal information from, from employees or competitors or suppliers, then that information is admissible for arbitration and can be used as part of making the legal case.
Whereas litigation it can't see therefore. Useless, but it is useful for strategy more than actually being able to present in front of a judge. And what I would say to let's go back to your question about data where. So in emerging markets and in all the jurisdictions where we work. So data privacy is becoming increasingly stringent in terms of the regimes and the regulations and the rules that govern use of personal data as intelligence or information gathering companies.
We don't have access to that big data. Of course, it's earned by the government or it's owned by. So unless you have some legal remedy or you are law enforcement, That is mostly beyond our remit. And then also as these, as governments have tightened up on what is available and what isn't, and in the old days, there would be information that was easily obtainable, but that doesn't mean that it was legal.
Whereas now it's much tighter, but as it becomes tighter, other sources of information become available. Because of this digital age and social media, and this doesn't apply to China, but in countries where there's a high uptake of Facebook, for instance, Indonesia, I think Indonesia is the biggest in terms of population, but using Facebook, I think is the biggest after to the U S.
And so that provides a huge amount of information that is available publicly. And from data analytics, we can start to scrape up that information. So if it's for dispute and. There is, or if it's related to intellectual property, for instance, then we can see that there are counterfeits goods all over various different online marketplaces.
We can use data analytics to just scrape that up and processes so much faster than it would be able to, if we were manually searching each different or monitoring it money. So there's things become available to us as other source of information are not available to us. So there's a sort of, there's a constant.
Movement and what information we're able to retrieve and process and what we can't. So it's actually, it's always evolving, always, which is interesting and challenging.
Art: If I can jump in a bit on the data, Wayne and Mavis mentioned the data security law that came out recently in China. And when that came out or as that was coming out, a lot of law firms and other advisory firms put out client alerts, which naturally being.
Focused on the implications for us companies or European companies, Western companies doing business in China, or doing business with Chinese company counterparts, but some smart commentators, even before the DD case, I think picked up on the fact that, Hey, this law is actually going to be much more of a problem for Chinese companies and it's going to be even for potentially Western country.
And so I wonder if you're, as you're dealing with Chinese clients doing business outside of China and having disputes outside of China versus helping the Western companies do business and have disputes, which are more based in China, broad question. What differences do you see working with those different clients?
And the different kinds of issues that come up and working, not just not talking necessarily stylistically how they work, although that would be interesting as well, but some of the issues that are presented to them as whether going from China out of China and vice versa.
Mavis: Yeah. I think from my perspective, talking about the expo that we do, I think Chinese clients generally are on a learning curve.
I don't think they are so used to, especially in proceedings, on the mainland, on the youth, the way the frequency and the value that experts bring to legal proceedings. I don't think. Completely familiar and up to speed with the whole concept. For example, I had a client, a Chinese client that was arbitrating a matter in Singapore.
And as part of that process, they had to retain accounting experts. But I think the client was having a great deal of difficulty in understanding why they can't just use their own internal resources, their own CFO to provide the experiments. Y experts costs. So as you might be and what a value that they can actually bring to what you need to evaluate at the Cambria.
I see. So I think from that perspective, they are learning equally on the e-discovery front. My experience it's that the multinationals, the foreign companies are much more accustomed to using the discovery tools compared to Chinese class. But that is unsure. What change rapidly, as similar as you say, many more Chinese companies are dealing with disputes outside of China.
Art: on the spot. I knew I had to ask that question. Not you.
Iris: Yeah. So we, we have business nearly getting like Africa and India and also like a CA these areas. I think every jurisdiction is really difficult for. And especially you pharmaceutical area and it's heavily compliance requirements. And we have to try to let it really hard,
Art: fast
Jessica: China business law podcast discussion with control risks continues here.
Part
Art: two of our interview with Mavis
Jessica: and Jessica.