Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton partner Megan Tang has left the firm to join Hong Kong's market watchdog the Securities & Futures Commission (SFC) as director of the corporate finance division.

Tang, who joined Cleary's Hong Kong office as a partner in 2008, will begin her new role at the SFC in February this year.

She will work alongside another former international law firm partner Ashley Alder, who joined the SFC as chief executive in 2011, from UK outfit Herbert Smith.

Alder, who was a corporate partner and head of Herbert Smith's Asia practice, re-joined the regulator after also doing a stint as executive director of corporate finance from 2001 to 2004.

Tang, a corporate lawyer with Cleary, has worked mostly on capital markets, M&A and private equity deals.

She has advised on a number of high profile corporate governance and compliance matters in Greater China, including general disclosure obligations, insider trading, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and anti-corruption regulations.

Prior to her role at Cleary, Tang was a counsel at Shearman & Sterling. She joined the firm in 2001 and was originally based in the Singapore office, before transferring to New York later that year and eventually moving to Hong Kong in 2004.

Specialising on capital markets, she helped to develop the firm's China practice and was elected counsel in 2006.

Before joining Shearman she was also an associate in the Singapore office of Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy from July 1999 through December 2000.

She moved to Milbank from Simmons & Simmons in London, having trained and qualified with the firm in Hong Kong in 1997.

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