AWARDS
Zhong Lun Honored by IFLR Asia-Pacific Awards 2025
Zhong Lun Honored by IFLR Asia-Pacific Awards 2025
On April 16, 2025, the International Financial Law Review (IFLR) announced the winners of the IFLR Asia-Pacific Awards 2025. Zhong Lun’s mandate “Black Sesame IPO” took home the Deals of the Year: Equity.
On August 8, 2024, Black Sesame International Holding Limited (“Black Sesame”, stock code: 2533.HK) made its initial public offering of shares in accordance with Chapter 18C and was successfully listed on the Main Board of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited, raising a total amount of HKD 1.036 billion. Zhong Lun Law Firm has long been providing legal services to Black Sesame, including navigating the client throughout multiple rounds of financing and serving as Chinese legal counsel in this listing.
Black Sesame is the first company to apply for listing under the “Specialist Technology Company” regime of Chapter 18C of the Listing Rules of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and obtain the filing from the China Securities Regulatory Commission. It is also the first autonomous driving chip company that has been listed in Hong Kong. The company focuses on automotive-grade intelligent vehicle computing system chips (SoC) and solutions. It is among the trailblazers in China to mass-produce high-computing-power autonomous driving SoCs and is the first to introduce an autonomous driving SoC with a computing power of 100+ TOPS. The company was the third largest supplier globally in terms of shipment volume of automotive-grade high-computing-power SoCs in 2023.
This project was led by partners Jihong Lai, Xiaodan Guo, and Jingeng Chen. Kang Yang, non-equity partner, served as the on-site leader. The project team members also included Zhicheng Xu. In addition, partner Jihong Chen, non-equity partner Xiaoxu Wu, and associate Chen Ma provided intellectual property legal services, and non-equity partners Jian Chen and Ruiting Chen provided legal services related to data compliance.
The IFLR Asia-Pacific Awards is committed to selecting the most representative achievements of the year by conducting in-depth analysis of the most complex and innovative mandates undertaken by law firms in the Asia-Pacific region within the cross-border legal service market, taking into account feedback from in-house counsels, financial professionals, and peer law firms.
