Dean Collins

Partner

Dean Collins is a partner in the Investment Funds and Securitization Practice of O’Melveny’s Singapore office and he provides leadership to the firm’s fund formation business in Asia. Since joining the firm in January 2009, Dean has acted on fund formation matters for a significant number of fund managers in relation to private equity, venture capital, infrastructure and hedge funds focused on China, India, Sri Lanka, South East Asia and on a pan-Asian basis, and has provided advice to both major local and international institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds on their investments into funds.

Dean has been advising on the establishment of private equity funds since 1995, and offers a unique perspective amongst private practice lawyers having spent over six years at Actis, the leading pan-emerging markets private equity firm, first as an in-house lawyer, and then as a Director in its highly regarded fundraising team.

Whilst at Actis, Dean’s achievements included:

• overseeing the complex spin-out of Actis from CDC Capital Partners (involving the continued management of a portfolio of over 300 legacy investments and the establishment of six new investment funds);
• structuring and negotiating a variety of funds across the private equity, real estate, distressed debt and infrastructure asset classes, targeting India (and the rest of South Asia), China, South East Asia, Latin America and Africa; 
• leading on certain key aspects, both legal and commercial, of the successful US$2.9bn fundraising for Actis Emerging Markets 3.

Prior to Actis, Dean worked for a leading European law firm where he advised innumerable institutions and management teams on their fundraising efforts, as well as acting on investments, exits, fund manager spin-outs, fund management joint ventures and a range of other corporate finance matters, including the structuring and execution of a number of milestone transactions in what was at the time a nascent fund secondaries market. Dean has also worked as a consultant for UBS Capital, Merrill Lynch International, and a number of private equity backed businesses.

Dean is a recommended investment funds lawyer in Chambers Asia 2010, Asia's Leading Lawyers for Business.