Description:
About this Seminar:
About the Speaker / Presenter:
PRESTON TORBERT
Baker & McKenzie LLP
Preston Torbert is a partner in the law firm Baker & McKenzie LLP and is based in Chicago. He is a graduate of Princeton University and received a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. in Chinese history from the University of Chicago.
He is admitted to the Illinois Bar and is a member of the Chicago Bar Association and the American Bar Association. He has served for three years as Co-chairman of the People’s Republic of China Law Committee of the ABA’s Section of International Law and Practice. He has also served as Chairman of the International Law Committee of the Chicago Bar Association.
Torbert was one of the founders of Baker & McKenzie’s China Practice Group and has spent five years in the People’s Republic and Taiwan. He began the study of Chinese in 1964 and is often mistaken for a native speaker. He played a key role in establishing the Taipei office of Baker & McKenzie in 1978 and later the Beijing office in 1981. He first visited the People’s Republic in 1975 and has represented U.S. multinationals there numerous times since then. He advises clients on strategic planning for China, the legal, tax and practical aspects of trade, licensing and investment as well as the negotiation of contracts in China. Since 1979 he has participated primarily in the drafting and negotiation of equity and cooperative joint venture contracts on behalf of a broad range of clients that include the largest U.S. multinationals as well as some medium and small sized companies.
Torbert’s publications include numerous articles on issues in trade and investment with China such as joint ventures, wholly foreign-owned ventures, technology transfer, taxation, contracts and intellectual property in The China Business Review, East Asian Executive Reports, Corporate Finance, International Financial Law Review, and other U.S. and Chinese publications. Torbert has lectured numerous times in Chinese on legal subjects in China and has also made dozens of presentations in the United States, Europe, and Asia about China. Torbert is the author of The Ch’ing Imperial Household Department (Harvard, 1977), is knowledgeable about the Palace Museum in Beijing, and offers guided tours of the Museum to clients when in Beijing. He is also the author of the book 法律英语：中英 双语法律文书制作 (Legal English: Guidelines for Drafting Chinese-English Bilingual Legal Documents) published by the Fudan U. Press in 2004.