A Focused Practice.
One Area of Law.
Perak Partners was formed to do one thing carefully: banking and finance law in Malaysia. We do not have a property department, a litigation wing, or a corporate advisory team. That is a choice, not an oversight.
← Back to HomeOur Story and Orientation
Perak Partners was established in Kuala Lumpur by practitioners who had each spent years inside larger commercial firms, primarily on transactions — facility documentation for Malaysian banks, lender-side security work for syndicated deals, and borrower representation in workouts. The observation that prompted the founding was simple: clients with banking and finance matters often found themselves working with teams that covered a wide range of commercial law, where the banking component was handled by one or two specialists within a larger group.
We set up with a narrower mandate. The firm's sole practice area is banking and finance law — facility agreements, debt restructuring, and the regulatory environment surrounding Malaysian financial institutions and those that wish to operate within it. This means that when you engage Perak Partners, the people reviewing your facility agreement are the same people who handle the regulatory correspondence and the restructuring term sheets. There is no routing between departments.
Our physical office is at Level 14, Menara CIMB in Kuala Lumpur, which places us in a familiar corridor for clients who work in the financial services sector. Most of our work is conducted by written deliverable — a marked-up agreement, a commentary document, a term sheet, a regulatory submission. We do not hold ourselves out as advisers who form oral views and explain them later; the document is the advice.
The firm's mission is to provide banking and finance law counsel that is primary-source oriented, clearly written, and delivered within stated timeframes. We do not measure ourselves by transaction volume. We measure ourselves by whether the client's board can read what we produced and act on it without asking for a translation.
Practice Values
We cite specific BNM guideline paragraphs and statutory sections, not condensed summaries. This matters when regulators or counterparties read the same documents.
Every engagement produces a document. Oral advice that cannot be reviewed later is not advice for institutional clients — it is commentary.
We present options with their trade-offs. Decisions belong to the client and their board. Our role is to make the options legible, not to narrow them.
Engagements begin with a written scope. We do not adjust fees after work has started without prior written agreement. Predictability matters to finance teams.
The Team
A small group of practitioners who have worked in banking and finance law throughout their careers. No generalists.
Rafiq Azmi
Seventeen years in banking and finance law. Previously led the banking documentation group at a Kuala Lumpur commercial firm. Primary practice areas are facility agreement drafting and review for Malaysian and foreign lenders, syndicated transactions, and project finance documentation.
Nadia Ibrahim
Focuses on debt restructuring and insolvency-adjacent matters. Has led advisory mandates for both corporate borrowers and lender syndicates on workouts, standstill negotiations, and Schemes of Arrangement under the Companies Act 2016. Former in-house at a listed Malaysian conglomerate.
Zulkifli Kamaruddin
Banking and finance regulatory work, with particular focus on Bank Negara Malaysia frameworks, Islamic finance structuring, and SC licensing requirements. Previously with a regulatory consultancy advising licensed financial institutions on IFSA and FSA compliance. Working knowledge of Arabic legal terminology in Shariah documentation.
Professional Standards
Operational and professional protocols followed across all Perak Partners engagements.
Malaysian Bar Membership
All practitioners at Perak Partners hold current membership of the Malaysian Bar. Continuing professional development requirements are met annually without exception.
Legal Professional Privilege
All communications between the client and the firm are covered by legal professional privilege. Engagement letters include mutual confidentiality provisions as standard.
Document Security
Client documents and correspondence are held in encrypted storage. Access is restricted to the engagement team. No client materials are shared externally without written consent.
Fee Transparency
Scope and fee are confirmed in writing before any work begins. Adjustments require prior written agreement from the client. Invoices itemise time and disbursements separately.
Shariah Advisory Coordination
Islamic finance engagements are coordinated directly with the client's appointed Shariah advisers. We do not substitute legal analysis for Shariah opinion, nor Shariah opinion for legal analysis.
Conflicts Protocol
Conflicts of interest are reviewed at engagement intake. Where a potential conflict exists, the firm discloses the position and declines the engagement where independence cannot be maintained.
Banking and Finance Law in Malaysia — How We Work
Malaysian banking and finance law operates within a framework established primarily by the Financial Services Act 2013, the Islamic Financial Services Act 2013, and a body of Bank Negara Malaysia policy documents and guidelines that are updated with some regularity. For practitioners, the interpretive challenge is not finding the primary text — it is knowing which version of a policy document is in force, whether a particular product falls within a licensing requirement or an exemption, and whether the facility documentation being reviewed reflects what is actually market-standard for this category of borrower and lender in Malaysia.
Perak Partners approaches all three practice areas — facility review, restructuring, and regulatory advisory — with the same methodology: identify the applicable primary sources, read them fully, and then assess the client's specific situation against that reading. We do not maintain a bank of template advice that we repurpose across mandates. The commentary we produce for a revolving credit facility review is written for that facility and that client's circumstances. The restructuring term sheet we draft reflects the specific lender group, the existing security structure, and the Companies Act 2016 procedures that are realistically available to that borrower at that time.
This approach takes longer per engagement than advisory that works primarily from precedent. We consider this an appropriate trade-off. Banking and finance documentation in Malaysia is consequential — the conditions precedent in a facility agreement, the cross-default mechanics, the events of default drafting — these are provisions that matter when circumstances change, not when a transaction is smooth. The review is worth doing carefully, or it is worth deferring.
A banking matter worth a careful read.
Send us a brief description of what you are working on. We respond within one working day with a plain-language summary of what the engagement would involve.
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