Palawi Bunnag

Palawi is at the cutting edge of business development in Thailand and surrounding regions. She holds two distinguished law degrees from a reputable Thai university and a prestigious UK university. Armed with her training in the common law and civil law and international business transactions, she has been dedicating her career to foster the development of cross-border trades and direct foreign investments for more than two decades.

Ms. Palawi is specialized in the capital market, corporate and commercial laws and is recognised in her expertise in FinTech laws since she partaked with the Securities Exchange Commission, Thailand in drafting the Real-Estate ICO laws. She leads the Capital market M&A and FinTech team and has advised and assisted in multiple high-profile clients across the globe. Her accumulated skills enabled her to close countless complex business deals.

Educations

• 1st Bachelor of Laws Degree: Queen Mary, University of London (Formerly known as Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London), (LL.B. (Hons) in 2nd class division)
• Professional Legal Training Legal Practice Course for Solicitors, College of Law, London
• 2nd Bachelors of Laws Degree: Chulalongkorn University, (LL.B.)

Qualifications

• Member of the Law Society of England & Wales
• Thai Bar Association
• Lawyers Council of Thailand
• Associate member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (ACIArb)
• Member of the Board of Governors of the Bangkok Club

Trainings

• Certificate of Tax Planning Strategy by the Thai Chamber of Commerce
• Taxation for International Trading by Federation of accounting Professionals
• Labour Law Training, by Labour Department and Labour Court
• International Tax Planning Towards AEC 2015
• Corporate Finance Law Masterclass 2016
• Certificate of Director Accreditation Program Class 132/2016 from the Thai Institute of Directors (Qualified to be a director of a public limited company listed on the SET

Languages

• Thai
• English
• French (fair)
• Spanish (basic)

Notable Achievements and Activities

• She has advised private equity funds, property fund, foreign investors, government entities, listed companies, well-known property developers, world recognized global companies and royal families in many high-profile deals.  She has led many successful high net worth M&A project deals both on the seller and buyer sides and occasionally acted for both at the same time (with a waiver of conflict of interests from both sides), as well as joint venture projects, thus she has ample experience in structuring the deals, taking into consideration any tax implication and tax planning, as well as, negotiating and executing M&A and joint venture agreements.  Her advice is not just limited to legal advice but also business advice since she has come across many business deals for the past years of her work.
• Palawi participated in the very first conversion of the property fund to REIT in Thailand. She has also done a few conversions from limited companies to public limited companies and assisted in listing their ordinary shares on the Stock Exchange of Thailand.
• Now, Palawi is working on a few FINTECH projects for a private equity fund and Chinese corporation, one of which, if succeeds, will be the first state-of-the-art FINTECH portal in Asia or most likely in the world.  She recently wrote an article for Asia Business Law Journal on the Digital Asset Business laws in Thailand (Download PDF)
• Palawi is a member of the board of governors of the prestigious Bangkok Club ), whose other members consists of representatives of Thailand’s leading business families.
• She also sits on the board of Selic Corp PCL, a Thai public-listed company as an independent director and on the Corporate Governance and Sustainable Development Committee.  She has been given advice to the company to improve the corporate governance and as a result, the company’s corporate governance’s rating score went up from 6 to 9 out of 10.  With her great advice and directions given to the company for the past years, the company has recently won the ‘Rising Star Awards’ for good corporate governance from the Thai Institute of Directors.
• Palawi has also been awarded with Thailand’s A-List Top 100 lawyers (2021) by Asia Business Law Journal (read more) and Legal 500 Recommended Lawyers 2022.