Who We Are: Partners and Principle Attorneys

IPO PANG is a member of the International Business Law Consortium, with over 100 law firms worldwide, working together as one affiliated law organization to provide service worldwide to all of our clients.

Peter C. Pang, Principal Attorney and Managing Partner

Mr. Pang is the founder and Principal Attorney of IPO PANG P.C., a premier international law firm well-known for its ability to obtain difficult, hard to get licenses, permits, approvals and government support for entry by a foreign enterprise into highly regulated Chinese industries, including pharmaceuticals, gaming, telecommunications, television, information technology and retailing, weaponry.

The firm, with substantial expertise in the areas of mergers and acquisitions, equity and cooperative joint ventures, intellectual property, corporate law and political lobbying in China, has been in China since the early 1990’s and is known as one of the oldest joint venture law firms. Mr. Pang was formerly general corporate in-house counsel to several Fortune 500 companies, including Shell Oil Company, Hershey Foods Corporation, Dole Food Company, and Nissan North America.

Mr. Pang specializes in helping multi-national companies in establishing a foothold and making an investment in China. He is a lobbyist with many years of experience and is well connected with the central government in China. He also specializes in protecting Famous American Brands from piracy and counterfeiting. Mr. Pang has been the principal driver behind over US$5 billion of M&A transactions over the last 30 years, 15 of which involved Sino-American matters. Mr. Pang advises American companies on how to be competitive in the China and global economy and has held various senior level legal positions, board seats and executive management roles.

As a seasoned business lawyer and entrepreneur, Mr. Pang was most recently the chief legal representative and Board member for a US publicly listed lottery and gaming company, having assisted the company in being the first to deploy an instant scratch lottery game in the PRC by a foreign corporation. He was also the founder and CEO of Globalontime.com, a logistics startup company with operations in Guanghzou, PRC and was also the former Director of International Shopping Network, Inc., a home shopping company with operations in Beijing, the first foreign company to introduce home shopping to PRC in 1994. Mr. Pang was also formerly President of CMC Technologies International, Inc., an electronics device manufacturer and oversaw the sale of the company to Australian bidders. Mr. Pang is a noted expert on doing business in the People's Republic of China, an expert on the legal and economic effect of China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), and a well-respected attorney and businessman having represented, founded, operated and sold a number of businesses ranging from internet and gaming companies to manufacturing and distribution companies located in the PRC.

Mr. Pang speaks both Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese. Mr. Pang is a graduate of UC Berkeley in Biochemistry, Santa Clara Law School where he was a member of Law Review, University of Houston with a LLM in International Economic Law, attended the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and studied law and economics in China and Hong Kong. He is admitted to practice in California, Texas, New York, DC and Pennsylvania, and is specially admitted as Legal Counselor by the Guangzhou Mayoral District for his work on anti-counterfeiting.

A frequently invited speaker, Mr. Pang is considered to be the leading expert on the expanding US-Sino economy and the laws that will govern its growth. Mr. Pang was the chief negotiator for the City of Oakland in its bid to obtain two Giant Pandas for the Oakland Zoo. Mr. Pang brings with him over 25 years of business, management and legal experience in the PRC. Mr. Pang was able to execute initiatives that few other Western companies have been able to do in the PRC and is considered a premier attorney/businessman about the Chinese lottery and gaming business in China and Macau. Mr. Pang is stationed in Shanghai, PRC, and spends his time between the firm’s offices in Guangdong Province, Shanghai and affiliate offices in Beijing, Hong Kong and other locations in China, as well as the firm’s liaison office in Oakland, California, USA.

Some of Mr. Pang’s accomplishments include:

1. Chief lobbyist and negotiator for bwin Interactive Entertainment in China; principally responsible for advising the Austrian publicly listed company and the world’s largest online entertainment company on the legal parameters for online entertainment in China;
2. Chief Representative, Legal Counsel and Operating Officer for a Las Vegas based company focused on bringing lotteries to China;
3. Chief negotiator for an Australian company in the procurement of the first Gold License to a foreign enterprise;
4. Chief negotiator and investor in the first home shopping television program to China on CCTV in 1996,
5. Responsible for bringing TVSN Home Shopping Network to China through successful negotiation of the seminal television broadcast contract with CETV, which program is still running after 8 years (a historic first for China);
6. Organized and founded, with the late Henry Fok, a logistics center in Nansha, Guangdong Province, which now serves as the logistics capital of Southern China;
7. Negotiated and procured the permission from the Chinese government to allow the first western company (Las Vegas, NV, USA) to sponsor and operate a lottery – including scratch off tickets, lotto’s, etc. on Mainland;
8. Negotiated, acquired and operated a digital mobile games developer in China and expanded its offerings to over 55 games;
9. Submitted a bid for two giant Pandas for the City of Oakland to the Central Conservation Association of China and competed with Memphis, TN for the rights (Memphis won);
10. On the mayor’s list of special legal attaché in the fight against counterfeiters in Guangdong Province;
11. Negotiated and procured the first gaming television show with SMG in Shanghai for a Western Company and executive produced 41 television shows in 2004;
12. Obtained the right for a US publicly listed company to distribute HIV detection equipment in China – a right that is tightly controlled and not granted easily
13. Developed key relationships that lay the foundation for entry of new biometric payment systems into China in conjunction with the State owned China Union Pay.
14. In his career as an attorney, consultant and businessman, Mr. Pang has helped over 100 companies to obtain difficult approvals from the Chinese Government, solve complex problems and recognize untapped business opportunities.

Thomas R. Miller, Senior Partner

Based in Oakland California, Mr. Miller’s areas of practice include Intellectual Property, Personal Injury Litigation, and Business Law.

Mr. Miller is a graduate of The Parker School of Foreign & Comparative Law, Columbia University as well as Stanford Law School, LL.B. and Yale University, B.A. He is admitted to practise in California and New York, and specializes in providing a variety of legal services primarily to the Asian communities from China, Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia. Mr. Miller was the first U.S. attorney to open a post-war office in Vietnam, providing business and legal assistance to foreign firms doing business in Vietnam, including a farmer cooperative project to produce organic fertilizer and Vietnam’s first “fair trade” gourmet coffee.

As Director of the Association for Fair Trade with Cuba, Mr. Miller provides business and legal assistance with respect to Cuba and is aiding various U.S. educational institutions establish programs there.

As an attorney, Mr. Miller has also engaged in general practice, intellectual property, personal injury litigation, business law and established limited partnerships in such areas as food products, micro-brewing, manufacturing, book investments and computer software, and engaged in book and software packaging and licensing with major publishers and computer hardware manufacturers such as Bantam, Microsoft, Dow Jones, Epson and Kyocera. Mr. Miller is a co-founder of California Beer Works (www.calbeerworks.com) and Bison Brewing Company, a successful micro-brewery in Berkeley, California.

Julian Zhu, Principal Attorney

Mr. Zhu specializes in contract law, employment law, environmental law and corporate M&A. Since earning his law degree at Fudan University School of Law in 1991, Mr. Zhu has studied abroad in the UK, and practiced corporate law at some of the top law firms in Hong Kong and Shanghai before joining the team at IPO PANG. He is skilled at registering FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) companies in China, and is an expert on IPOs for the Hong Kong, Shanghai, and overseas stock markets. Mr. Zhu speaks English, Mandarin, and Shanghainese.