GC Influencers
Most Influential GCs - China
Timothy Steinert of Alibaba Group
Before joining Alibaba as General Counsel in 2007, Timothy Steinert was a highly rated capital markets partner in the Hong Kong office of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP. A fluent Mandarin speaker, Tim has played an essential role within the company for over a decade and was a key figure in the company’s record-breaking IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014. He has helped to spearhead Alibaba’s remarkable rise, with the company recently recording a 10th straight quarter in which it posted more than 50% year-over-year revenue growth.
Interviewees laud the “great job he has done at the helm of the company” and consider him to be a “very well respected individual in the Chinese tech space.” The company has made use of Tim’s exceptional transactional experience over the past few years, undertaking a series of headline transactions, including its USD2.5 billion privatisation of Intime Retail, its USD1.2 billion acquisition of Ikang Healthcare as part of a consortium and its USD9.5 billion acquisition of Ele.me.
Most Influential GCs - Global-wide
Timothy Steinert of Alibaba Group
Alibaba continues to go from strength to strength, with the ecommerce giant offering services ranging from retail, cloud computing, media and entertainment, logistics and banking. Taking the reins of the sprawling conglomerate’s legal division is its general counsel and corporate secretary Timothy Steinert, who was hired in 2007 from Freshfields. Over the course of his decade in the top legal role, he and his team haves overseen Alibaba’s rapid international expansion, its rollout of a host of new products and services and, most impressively, it’s record-busting USD25 billion IPO in 2014. Steinert’s transactional expertise is also put to good use, with 2018 seeing the company acquire Ele.me for USD9.5 billion and take part in the USD2.5 billion privatisation of Intime Retail. Interviewees report: “The sheer scope of the challenging legal issues that Tim has to manage would cause a lot of people to wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, but he’s smart, steady and sensible. He’s been a terrific asset for that group as they’ve grown.”