Legal eagle flies high but stays humble

THE first thing that strikes you when you meet Milton Cheng is his humility. The high-profile corporate lawyer is one of the best known names in the industry. But it soon becomes apparent how quick Cheng is to play down his own successes, while elevating the roles of others around him.

"I'm a down-to-earth, regular person, who's been given a lot of opportunities in my career and have tried to make the most of them," says Cheng.

Judging from his long list of accolades, though, Cheng is far from regular. In 2019, Cheng became the first Asian to be elected global chair of Baker McKenzie, one of the world's leading law firms, overseeing its 13,000 people in nearly 50 jurisdictions. He is also the first Singaporean to chair any global law firm.

The race to be the firm's global chair was not an easy one. Cheng was one of 15 candidates vying for the top role. However, his experience as managing partner of the Hong Kong office, as well as chief executive of Baker McKenzie's offices and businesses in China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Myanmar, put him in good stead.

Cheng is recognised as the Outstanding Overseas Executive of the Year for his achievements at Baker Mckenzie, where he rose from a graduate lawyer to become the first Singaporean lawyer to be named chair of a leading global law firm, which operates out of 77 offices in 46 countries.

Just months after Cheng took the helm, however, the coronavirus pandemic broke out. "I took over in October 2019. But just as I was settling in and finding my feet, Covid hit," Cheng recounts. "But we've been blessed, we've actually done better than we thought we would."

As business activities froze, Cheng sat down with the team to refocus: "If we're going through this, our clients are going through this too. So how can we use our own experience to support our clients as they are going through the same experience?"

They came up with a 3 'R' framework - resilience, recovery, renewal - to help the firm and clients weather the storm and look for new opportunities in a post-Covid landscape.

Under Cheng's stewardship, Baker McKenzie saw its revenue grow 7.8 per cent year on year to US$3.1 billion for the FY2021 ended June 2021 - crossing the US$3 billion mark for the first time in the firm's history. The firm's profits also soared 36.7 per cent, on the back of carefully managed costs amid the pandemic.

A large part of this success is Cheng's focus on pragmatism and inclusivity as he steered the firm through the choppy waters, which has earned him praise for being a "listening leader". Cheng, however, is quick to share the limelight: "We pulled together," he says. "It was a very challenging year, but the team pulled together."

THE SINGAPORE DNA

According to Cheng, one of the key strengths that has allowed Baker McKenzie to excel is having a core leadership team that is a mix of various nationalities. "Having a leadership team that has a lot of different perspectives, understands that we need to have some common core values, but works inclusively to adapt to the changing needs of our team and our clients around the world, is very important," Cheng says.

This, he says, is one of the things about being Singaporean that has helped him in his role.

"Singaporeans are very multicultural," Cheng says. "When you go overseas, and as I mix more and more into bigger melting pots, especially in my global role, it's important to have the cultural openness and cultural curiosity which you have as a Singaporean."

Growing up, Cheng says studying at St Joseph's Institution - and later at Hwa Chong Junior College - was a "good formative experience".

"It's really an entire mix of personalities, social backgrounds, and you make friends across a very wide spectrum," he says.

"Getting to know and getting on with people of all sorts of different backgrounds has actually helped me in my career as I went along."

In addition, Cheng points to the ability to adapt and grow as other Singaporean traits that allowed the Little Red Dot to punch above its weight.

"If we look at the way the country has changed, its economic focus over the years, and how the population and the government changed along with it - that's the Singapore DNA," Cheng says.

"We have a growth mindset, and we look at everything as an opportunity to learn new skills that add on to what we already have."

He adds that the pandemic has also brought to the fore the Singapore spirit of resilience.

"Nothing is ever smooth sailing all the time, and with the ups and downs along the way, we just need to be resilient," he says.

In fact, Singapore was the reason that drew Cheng to Baker McKenzie in the first place.

Graduating at the top of his law class at King's College, London, Cheng had received offers from all the big UK firms.

His plan was to train for a few years in London before heading back to Singapore. However, none of the big international law firms had any plans for a Singapore office then.

"The one firm that said 'Yes, our ethos is to train people like you. We'll train you here, and we'll send you back to Singapore to help us build the Singapore office' is Baker McKenzie," Cheng says.

"So I picked the firm because that was a firm that actually recognised that you grow a global platform best, not by parachuting people from London or US in, but by giving people from that country good training overseas and giving them the opportunity to help you grow the business in their home country," he adds.

LIVING THE DREAM

Cheng's journey home to Singapore, however, would take longer than expected.

As Hong Kong's capital markets were booming in the early 1990s, Cheng was offered the opportunity to work there for "a couple of years" before heading to Singapore.

"I'm in the 28th year of my 2-year attachment to Hong Kong," Cheng laughs. "Through the whole of the 1990s and 2000s, Hong Kong really was just booming, with a lot of opportunities for a young lawyer, so I just stayed on."

Through the years, Cheng has built extensive experience in a wide range of merger and acquisition (M&A), corporate restructuring, advisory and corporate finance work for clients. These include listed Reits and property companies, real estate funds, financial institutions and multinational corporations.

Cheng has consistently been recognised as a leading lawyer in his field, earning him plaudits as "The pioneer of Hong Kong Reits".

And under his leadership, Baker McKenzie's Reit practice has been at the forefront of ground-breaking Reit transactions in Asia. The firm has become the trusted adviser to a number of leading Hong Kong-listed Reits, including Link Reit, Champion Reit, Fortune Reit, Prosperity Reit, Yuexiu Reit, Regal Reit and Spring Reit.

Cheng also led the formation of Baker McKenzie's joint operation in China with FenXun Partners, a first-of-its-kind collaboration model that has since been followed by other leading international law firms.

The Baker McKenzie FenXun joint operation this year scooped 18 awards at the China Business Law Journal's China Business Law Awards 2021, including the coveted "Best International Law Firm" award for the fifth straight year.

Cheng himself is no stranger to awards and accolades.

He is a member of the advisory board of the World Economic Forum's Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and is on the steering committee of the Global AI Action Alliance. He also represents Baker McKenzie on "The Valuable 500" business-to-business disability initiative and on the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Last year, Cheng was named "International Managing Partner of the Year" at The Asia Legal Awards.

"I've been given opportunities like I never would have dreamed of when I joined this law firm. We can do that, and we are doing that, with people all around the world at Baker McKenzie," Cheng says.

Cheng's dream, he says, was having a career in a business that allowed him to keep learning.

"In that sense, I am living the dream because the firm has given me all kinds of opportunities," he says. "Even now, I continue to learn from my colleagues and our global leadership team, from the other CEOs and global chairs that I have the fortune of interacting with."