Michael S. Carl joined SSEK in 2004 and has more than 20 years of experience practicing law in Southeast Asia. He received his J.D. in 1994 from the University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall) School of Law and is a member of the California State Bar.
Before joining SSEK, Mr. Carl was associated with international law firm Baker & McKenzie in its Singapore and Bangkok offices, where he represented Indonesian and Thai concerns in US debt and equity offerings and debt restructurings. At SSEK, he specializes in securities, mergers and acquisitions, and banking transactions.
He is recognized by Chambers Asia Pacific as a leading practitioner in the fields of corporate/M&A, projects and natural resources, and telecommunications, and by Chambers Global for corporate/M&A and projects and natural resources. He has been acknowledged by the International Financial Law Review 1000 as one of Indonesia's top financial and corporate, M&A, banking, restructuring and insolvency, capital markets and project finance lawyers. He is an Asialaw Recommended Lawyer and was named one of the world's leading banking finance and transactional lawyers by Euromoney's Expert Guides. In 2012, Mr. Carl was voted an External Counsel of the Year for Indonesia by the readers of Asian-MENA Counsel.
Mr. Carl obtained a B.A. in History from Harvard University in 1988 and an M.A. in Economics from the University of Hawaii in 1990. While in Hawaii, he was a graduate fellow at the East-West Center. Prior to entering legal practice in Singapore, Mr. Carl spent a year studying Indonesian commercial law at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta. He received an Indonesian law degree in 2012 from Atma Jaya University in Jakarta.
Mr. Carl has given seminars on US securities at Trisakti University in Jakarta and has spoken on contemporary issues in securities law before the Indonesian Capital Markets Lawyers Association and on the role of foreign lawyers in Indonesia at the University of Indonesia. He is fluent in Indonesian and proficient in Thai.