Sophie Mathur

Sophie leads the firm’s Corporate practice across Asia and has over 20 years of experience in cross-border corporate transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, private equity transactions, takeovers and joint ventures across Southeast Asia. Sophie has specialist expertise in the financial services, consumer and technology sectors and is well-known for her pivotal role in deals with a strong Singapore nexus.

Sophie began her career in London, where she trained and worked for five years. In 2010, Sophie spent three months in Jakarta on a secondment to PT Astra International, Indonesia’s largest conglomerate, assisting on the legal aspects of many of the group’s businesses.

Over the course of her career, Sophie has consistently worked on some of the largest and most complicated transactions in the region. Sophie is recognised for her Corporate/M&A expertise, and is ranked as a Band 1 lawyer by Chambers Asia-Pacific 2024 and inducted into the ’Hall of Fame’ by Legal 500 Asia-Pacific 2023. The leading legal directories note that she “outstanding and on top of things”, “technically gifted and able to navigate different legal cultures”, concluding that she is "the gold standard for M&A in the region. Sophie was also awarded Lawyer of the Year (Private Practice) at the Legal 500 Southeast Asia 2020/21 Awards.

Work highlights

Sophie has led on a number of significant transactions. These include advising:

• Citi on the sale of its five consumer bank franchises in Southeast Asia - in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. At a deal value of over US$3bn, this was one of the largest M&A deals in Asia Pacific in 2021.
• Macquarie Asset Management, as part of a consortium, on its c.US$610m acquisition of a significant minority stake in Bersama Digital Infrastructure Asia Pte. Ltd., which holds a 62.4% stake in Indonesia-listed PT Tower Bersama Infrastructure Tbk., a leading independent telecom towers business in Indonesia. This is one of the largest foreign investments into the Indonesian digital infrastructure sector.
• AXA and Affin Bank on their MYR 290bn (€262m) auction sale of a majority stake in AXA Affin General Insurance Berhad and AXA Affin Life Insurance Berhad to Generali. This transaction was one of the largest insurance deals in Malaysia in 2021.
• Temasek on its Series E investment into Gojek, Indonesia's first and leading on-demand, multi-service tech platform.
• Everstone Capital on the auction sale of 100% of the Everise Group, a business process outsourcing organization with offices and subsidiaries located across seven jurisdictions worldwide (including Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines), to Brookfield Capital.
• ANZ on the sale to DBS of their consumer banking business in Southeast Asia – in Singapore, Hong Kong SAR, Indonesia, mainland China and Taiwan.

Sophie is the Chairperson of Babes, a Singapore-registered charity that supports pregnant teens. She is also on the advisory board of the Singapore Management University Law School and on the Company Law Advisory Panel - an advisory panel established by the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority of Singapore to advise it on corporate law. 

Sophie studied law at Trinity College, Oxford University.

She speaks English and Bahasa (both Indonesia and Melayu).