Author/contributor
Yan Yuan
Partner
NEW YORK — December 17, 2024 — Sterlington PLLC announced that Yan Yuan, a transactional lawyer with vast experience in cross-border mergers, acquisitions, and other capital investments, has joined the firm as a partner.
“Yan brings a wealth of experience in cross-border transactions and strategic orientation that investors of all kinds will benefit from,” said Christopher S. Harrison, managing partner of Sterlington. “He will build on our strong M&A capabilities at a time when the global political landscape makes his insight all the more valuable.”
Yan advises private equity firms as well as public and private companies on complex M&A transactions, venture and growth capital investments, joint ventures, and buyouts across a wide range of industries that include technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT), healthcare, and semiconductor manufacturing, He has advised on transactions involving entities based in China as well as Southeast Asia, Europe, and South Americas. In addition to his transactional work, he also regularly advises on matters of corporate governance.
Yan joins Sterlington from the global law firm Ashurst, where he was a partner in their corporate practice, and before that practiced for 15 years with Clifford Chance. During his tenure at Clifford Chance, he spent time in a senior in-house role while seconded to a globally leading TMT company headquartered in China.
Together with Yan, a corporate associate Jing Zhang also joins Sterlington, who was an associate at Clifford Chance in their Corporate/M&A and Private Equity practices and recently obtained an LLM from Standford Law School.
“Sterlington has an incredibly attractive platform and practitioners of the highest caliber,” said Yan. “I see the opportunity to continue expanding the firm’s cross-border practice while adding depth to its well-known abilities in domestic M&A work for private firms and other clients.”
Yan joins a string of high-profile lateral partners who have joined Sterlington in the second half of 2024. They include Paul Jebely, the top private aviation attorney globally serving ultra-high-net-worth individuals; Jonathan Sherman, a decorated litigator who spent much of his career at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP; Courtney Rockett, another longtime Boies Schiller litigator; and Robert Ray, the former independent counsel who succeeded Kenneth Starr and led high-profile public corruption investigations, including the Monica Lewinsky matter and the FBI files controversy.
Yan received his JD from the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School, an MS in chemistry from the University of California Riverside, and a BS in chemistry from Fudan University in Shanghai, China.
