Apisith & Alliance, our member in Thailand, hosted the Annual General Meeting of ADVOC Asia held on Thursday 7 to Sunday 10 November 2013. Some years ago we had met in Bangkok. This meeting was held in Chiang Mai, the old Imperial capital in the north of Thailand.

The meeting was well attended with only a few of our members not able to send delegates. We were pleased to have six people from member firms in Europe and one from ADVOC North America to join us at the conference. We welcomed three representatives from Trust Law Firm in Guangzhou Guangzhou province PRC to their first meeting.

Decisions taken at the meeting included:

  • Admit JTJB Myanmar Co Limited as our member for Myanmar (Burma)
     
  • Receive reports from each of the Chapters. Niels Opstrup, the President of ADVOC Europe, was able to report on Europe, Latin America and ADVOC Africa. Bill Sellay reported on ADVOC North America
     
  • Reports were presented on behalf of each of the Network Committees
     
  • A report was received on the successful Business Law Conference held in August 2013 in Bali. Given the success of the conference, including the pleasing surplus of over US$3,000 received by ADVOC Asia, it was resolved to hold a second Business Law Conference during 2014
     
  • The budget for 2014 was adopted. Membership and joining fees remain the same
     
  • It was time to elect our members to the Network Committees. Our representatives on these Committees as elected are:
    • IP Committee - Apisith John Sutham and Cindy Goh
    • Rules and Protocols Committee - Simon Fraser and Chelsea Li
    • Website and Marketing Committee - Timothy Cheung and Robert Gregory.


Apart from the important meeting time, we were able to enjoy social and networking activities in Chiang Mai. This included a half day city and temple tour, a visit to the Mae Sa Elephant Camp, including the opportunity for an elephant ride, and a visit to cultural and historic sites around the city.

The whole conference was enjoyable and worthwhile, being a great combination of work, networking and fun.

Our next ADVOC Asia meeting will be the Annual General Meeting for 2014 to be held in Perth, Western Australia on 6-10 November 2014. Our next following meeting, being the meeting prior to the Joint Meeting in Peru in November 2015, will be a meeting in Yangon in Myanmar (Burma) on 30 April to 3 May 2015.

We encourage all members of ADVOC to attend our conferences.

Simon Fraser
for President, ADVOC Asia