Gina Yao

Gina has served clients from a variety of industries including financial services, pharmaceutical companies, insurance, retail, real estate, and manufacturing.

Examples of her professional experience include:

• Performed operational due diligence on private equity fund managers focusing on impact investing in emerging markets (India and Africa) for large institutional investors such as various national development finance institutions in Europe. Reviewed the adequacy and quality of operational policies and procedures (P&P) around risk management, governance, and cash management, and tested the implementation of such P&P and adherence to the fund documents including detailed cash drawdown/distribution testing. Benchmarked the operations with market best practices and proposed recommendation to the fund managers for improvement.
• Collaborated with internal data and technology team to perform data analysis into facilitation payments over a 10-year period in South-east Asia markets for an international consultancy firm with respect to a potential merger and acquisition (M&A) deal. Reviewed the transactions captured from the data analytics and identified any transactions that would potentially violate the UK Bribery Act and categorized the transactions by risk level. Presented the risk assessment and trend analysis of such transactions by country/service line to facilitate management decision and the M&A negotiation.
• Conducted internal investigation on alleged related party transactions and kickbacks for a China-listed real estate company. Performed analysis on cash flows and fund tracing between group companies and a supplier over a 10-year period. Performed quantification of damages due to alleged misconduct by a major shareholder in relation to alleged overvaluation of a company for a backdoor listing. Delivered report to support counsel in application of injunction order in the U.S.
• Built up the function in China to prevent, investigate, and mitigate employee reimbursement-related fraud, abuse, and waste issues for a global retail and technology company, including hiring and training the team, and setting up or refining procedures, systems, and mechanisms and identifying and conducting employee investigations.
• Conducted an internal investigation of a HK-listed company regarding issues on its business conduct and potential related-party transactions. Led a team of four to review relevant documents and records and to conduct electronic review on senior management that was potentially involved, including review on emails and computer files. Performed statistical analysis on stock trading data to identify any abnormal pattern and related-party transactions. Delivered status and findings report which assisted the client to understand and resolve the issues.
• Conducted electronic review for the private banking arm of a global bank to examine business conduct of its private bankers. Led a team of 16 people to perform review on email communications and trading calls between private bankers and their clients. The engagement assisted the bank in identifying business misconduct and in making disciplinary actions against its employees.
• Performed fraud/anti-bribery due diligence on the target of a merger and acquisition deal for a U.S. client. Examined the corporate environment, reviewed the compliance-related policies and procedures, led a team of four people to perform sample transaction testing on compliance-sensitive accounts across the target’s major offices in Asia, and assessed the target’s anti-bribery risk and risk of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act (FCPA).
• Performed regulatory compliance review on anti-money laundering (AML) policies, procedures, and practice of the Hong Kong branch of a global bank in response to compliance failures identified by the local regulator. Conducted AML procedures and controls walk-through and testing and performed policies and procedures gap analysis against local regulations and requirements.
• Engaged in a large-scale know your client (KYC) remediation for an international private bank in response to customer due diligence (CDD) failures identified by the local regulator. Conducted gap analysis on customer profiles, analyzed risk rating, identified and escalated PEPs, conducted transaction review, and composed KYC report. Delivered over 60 remediated, high-quality customer profiles. Moreover, led a sub-team of eight people in the project. Monitored team progress and performed quality check on over 40 customer KYC reports.
• Performed fraud/financial crime investigation with a focus on Foreign Corrupt Practice Act (FCPA) violation for several international pharmaceutical companies. Conducted transaction testing on employee expenses including reviewing supporting documents and researching external information sources, performing data analytics to analyze spending pattern and identifying falsified expense, and composing case summary. The work performed assisted the companies in making disciplinary actions against the involved employees and enhancing their internal controls.
• Conducted investigation for several U.S./HK-listed companies in a range of industries into either financial statement fraud or employee fraud. Work performed included transaction review, electronic documents review, site visits, management and employee interview, and loss quantification.