Global Network, Local Expertise

Our seasoned capital markets lawyers are involved in the planning, structuring, advisory and implementation of many high-profile and significant capital markets transactions in Indonesia. We represent issuers, underwriters and other deal participants in capital markets transactions across a wide range of industries, including initial public offerings (IPOs), traditional equity or bond offerings as well as more complicated or structured hybrid instruments and derivatives. We also advise our clients on pre- and post- IPO matters such as corporate restructuring and reorganization, debt restructuring and refinancing.

Leveraging our extensive experience in the capital markets and staying on top of new developments in the financial investment and other capital markets-related laws and regulations, our lawyers are trained to render practical solutions that can meet specific client needs in a solutions-oriented way.

We have experience in advising clients on the full spectrum of the construction and infrastructure life cycle, from transactional and advisory work, covering all aspects of construction and infrastructure project work from preparation, legal feasibility study, inception, procurement of regulatory approval to project implementation, including drafting and reviewing of various contract and project documents, project structuring and management.

We are equipped with practical legal acumen to provide clients with a comprehensive range of legal solutions for cross-disciplinary construction and infrastructure matters involving property, procurement, compliance and financing aspects to dispute resolution, including arbitration and litigation related to construction and projects-related disputes.

We provide comprehensive and professional legal services on the full range of business legal issues affecting today's corporate enterprises related to the general corporate and commercial matters, such as corporate governance, constitution and operation of the board of directors and general meeting of shareholders, strategic alliances, protection of management rights, joint ventures, sales and purchase, franchise agreements and licensing, corporate restructuring, reorganization and various contractual and transactional needs.

Foster additionally provides supporting legal services related to the establishment of foreign companies' domestic subsidiaries, branches and representative offices including retainer services to assist the clients in their day-to-day legal affairs and operation. We understand that an organization’s contracts and commercial agreements are of pivotal importance to its growth, profitability and sustainability, therefore we strive to align with our clients’ in-house legal teams to ensure such arrangements are robust, appropriate and pragmatic.

We distinguish ourselves by our responsive, attentive, client-centric approach and strong commercial acumen in alignment with our commitment to develop a deep understanding of our client’s business plans, business models and key objectives in both daily and strategic general corporate and commercial matters of our clients, as we have built a reputation as the dynamic and commercially savvy team that clients want on their side at the negotiating table.

We advise institutional clients and entrepreneurs on all aspects of employment issues, ranging from employment contracts and procedures (including formulation and enforcement of severence agreements), employment aspects of mergers and acquisitions, business restructuring issues, employment investigations, organizational restructuring issues, restrictive covenants, fiduciary duties, non-competition, transfer of employees and wrongful termination to disciplinary actions, harassment and misuse of confidential information, transactional and advisory matters, and regulatory issues.

Our approach is client-oriented. We work closely with clients to avoid expensive and counterproductive legal disputes through the development of sound labor policies and practices incompliance with the prevailing employment regulations in Indonesia.

With years of experience under our belt, the team has extensive experience in contentious matters and industrial relations work, including litigation and mediation of employee claims. We are the go-to firm for corporates, investors, entrepreneurs and C-suite individuals looking to navigate Indonesia’s increasingly involved employment and industrial relations landscape. We strive to achieve amicable solutions wherever possible so that the cases in which we are involved do not reach the tribunal stage. For those that do, however, we are happy to deploy our proven employment litigation capability.

Our employment lawyers focus on providing our clients with practical and effective legal advice based on in-depth legal knowledge and experience related to a broad range of labor and employment issues. We are also able to utilize the expertise of specialists at our firm from the Corporate, Commercial and Investment Practice and Dispute Resolution, Antitrust and Insolvency Practice of our firm when necessary, thereby providing a multi-disciplinary approach enabling comprehensive, prompt and proactive solutions for our clients.

While many employment lawyers specialize in transactions, counselling or litigation, most of our team supports clients in all three areas comprehensively, which gives us a broader perspective on employment problems and the practicalities of industrial relation matters, which aids our effectiveness in all aspects of our labor and employment practice.

Foster's Fintech Practice offers fintech companies of all sizes a robust platform for their legal and regulatory needs. We partner with companies that are driving the digital transformation in finance, from startups to established financial institutions. Our multidisciplinary practice has deep experience advising fintech companies in all stages of their life cycle on a broad range of matters from general advice on fintech-related laws and regulations, regulatory compliance and licensing, commercial transactions, procurement of product approvals, data privacy, cybersecurity to resolution of disputes relating to claims of regulatory violations, crisis management and response to sanctions.

We also advise on all phases of the investment life cycle of fintech companies, from debt and/or equity fundraisings to advisory on IPO preparation and exit strategy through either public or private markets. We regularly guide our clients through their internal strategic initiatives such as the formulation of Employee Stock Option/Ownership Program (ESOP) and corporate transactions, including private and public M&A, restructuring and reorganization matters.

The rapid development in financial technology presents complex and intricate legal and regulatory issues resulting from the complicated interplay between the financial regulations, IT and business - issues such as those relating to regulatory approvals, interpretations of regulations and guidelines, information security and anti-money laundering (AML). We are capable of helping our clients stay ahead of constantly evolving regulation and government directives, market developments and industry best practices in the fintech sector, and to provide fintech legal services that are constantly evolving in response to changing market needs.

Our team has extensive experience in providing legal services to international clients in every aspect of investing in or expanding their business in Indonesia. This practice area covers an entire range of legal services from strategic planning, investment structuring, capital deployment, establishing a business presence in Indonesia, as well as to providing advice on day-to-day operations.

We help numerous foreign clients navigate Indonesia's complex regulatory framework, licensing and compliance in the preparation and execution of their foreign direct investment in Indonesia, especially in highly regulated sectors such as financial services, fintech, energy and natural resources, healthcare and transportation, to ensure that their market entry, company inception and business operation are well-structured and are carried on in full compliance with legal requirements.

Foster help clients to identify, commercialise and protect their innovation, technology, brands, content, data, know-how and intellectual assets. Our practice covers transactional, advisory and contentious matters where we provide a fully integrated, one-stop legal service on all aspects of intellectual property, from registration, enforcement and prosecution of copyright, patent, trademark and trade secrets, to IP transfer, audit, compliance and transactions involving intellectual property across a diverse range of highly regulated industries, including manufacturing, transportation and automotive, financial services, logistics, shipping, energy, mining and plantation.

Our Head of Intellectual Property and Technology Practice Group is adept at coordinating high-value commercial conflicts with significant IP components, anticipating adversarial tactics and delivering decisive results in high-stakes cases in the most challenging litigation scenarios, with effective combination of courtroom experience, technical IP knowledge, and industry insight required for companies seeking to protect and enforce their most valuable assets.

Clients trust us for their strategic projects, transactions and disputes where IP is critical and the commercial challenges are complex, as we consistently help them to navigate the challenges they face from an intellectual property and business perspective. Not only that we provide strategic advice to ensure perpetual protection and legitimacy of the client’s IP assets, we are also well-equipped with extensive experience in complex IP infringement cases and litigations. Our practice is also purpose-built for seamless representation in various facets of IP commercial transactions including due diligence, drafting and reviewing licensing, franchising, sale and transfer agreements relating to IP rights, mergers and acquisitions, collaborations, joint ventures and other strategic commercial arrangements.

Foster has a distinguished M&A team in its Corporate, Commercial and Investment Practice Group that is engaged in the wide array of domestic, cross-border, public and private mergers and acquisitions and private equity transactions across a variety of industries, including joint ventures, for a broad client base including strategic investors, multinational enterprises, family offices and financial institutions. Our advisory services span from the design of transaction structures and pre-assessment of potential issues, to contract negotiation and execution, procurement of government approval for acquisitions, condition precedents monitoring, transaction implementation, and post-transaction management.

We offer the full range of legal capabilities necessary to achieve success in our clients' M&A transactions, on time and efficiently, encompassing from the pre-deal to post-transaction stages, thereby providing novel and innovative solutions tailored to each transaction. This includes the associated legal assistance required for acquisition financing, antitrust review, employment issues, intellectual property safeguards, regulatory compliance and tax-efficient structuring in relation to M&A deals of our clients.

For that purpose, our team is also adept at coordinating the relevant professionals from various disciplines in relation to M&A deals, either legal or non-legal contributors, such as auditors, tax and finance consultants, as well as antitrust, intellectual property, regulatory and manpower specialists, with an extraordinary level of interactivity that provides a seamless, integrated service.

Foster's Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals Practice offers a full spectrum of legal services to both international and domestic clients across the healthcare, pharmaceutical, and life sciences industries. With a multidisciplinary team of legal experts, Foster specializes in key sectors including medical service, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, food and cosmetics.

Our healthcare practice combines robust transactional, regulatory, and dispute capabilities, allowing us to assist clients in the market entry, regulatory compliance and licensing, complex commercial transactions, corporate actions, new drug development and disputes in the healthcare industry.

We understand the nuances of healthcare and pharmaceuticals-related regulations and also the intricacies of government bureaucracy and stakeholder engagement within, and are well equipped to navigate the intricacies of compliance in this highly regulated industry. Our proactive approach ensures that clients can mitigate risks and capitalize on opportunities in their transactions.

Our Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) specialists in the firm’s Intellectual Property and Technology Practice Group advises across a wide range of transactional work and commercial matters relating to e-commerce, telecommunications, fibre network acquisitions and investments, data centers, media, entertainment and broadcasting, e-sport and gaming, cloud computing and strategic issues such as regulatory and licensing matters within the telecom and media sectors including data protection and privacy aspects of our clients' business.

Our tech-savvy lawyers are capable of handling a wide span of issues arising in the regulatory frame work in the telecom, media and tech sectors, including operating and investment restrictions, OTT service, LTE and 5G services, licensing hurdles and user protection rules, in addition to traditional telecom issues such as spectrum allocation, electronic transactions, data governance, internet, software licensing and facility compliance. Our services include crisis management as well in response to major data breach incidents and investigations.

We support clients in these sectors with developing/creating, negotiating and documenting transactions that involve multifaceted statutory compliance framework and regulatory aspect with a keen emphasis on the commercial aspects that go beyond the pure legal advice to act as trusted business advisors. Foster's lawyers are well versed in the full plethora of issues surrounding the development, protection, financing, acquisition and transaction of assets and business across the whole spectrum of TMT sectors.

Our Energy and Natural Resources Practice consists of lawyers who provide all-around legal services in diverse areas of contentious and non-contentious disciplines within the energy and natural resource sector, always with an awareness of commercial realities along with deep understanding of the complexity of stakeholder engagement and government bureaucracy aspect in this sector.

In such a context, clients frequently face significant challenges and legal risks as well as attractive opportunities, and we are adept at helping them strategize and respond decisively to the dynamic landscape in which they operate to help them achieve their goals in compliance with the prevailing and dynamic regulations.

Our integrated multi-disciplinary teams cover a wide range of sub-sectors, including oil and gas, mining and metals, power and utilities renewables (solar, hydrogen, biomass, waste-to-energy, geo-thermal energy, and hydropower). Foster's wide-ranging practice in this field includes facilitating project development, such as securing financing and negotiating credit and debt restructurings, addressing land rights issues, and dealing with permits, compliance requirements and regulatory statutes.

Our dispute lawyers and litigators have good reputation in the dispute resolution arena as evidenced by the representation of high-profile clients in many complex and sensitive commercial litigation.

Foster’s team in this practice group is renowned for their consistent quality in offering practical counselling on a wide array of contentious and non-contentious issues encountered in commercial litigation process, emphasizing on the importance of incisive analysis of the facts, circumstances and merits with a clear map of our clients’ objectives.  

Foster’s litigation lawyers have the skills and expertise to represent the clients in the following fields:

- Banking, finance and insurance disputes
- Contractual and commercial disputes
- Contentious employment matters
- Company and shareholder disputes
- EPC (Engineering, Procurement & Construction) disputes
- Property and real estate disputes
- Shipping and maritime disputes
- Fraud, audits and asset-tracing
- Constitutional and administrative

We have competent litigators who are familiar with end-to-end court proceedings in Indonesia to pursue or defend the client' legal rights. Foster's Partners who lead this practice have earned a strong reputation for possessing the resources, and most importantly, the specialized capability to deal with complicated and high-stakes disputes to the satisfaction of clients.

Besides helping clients resolve their disputes through conventional litigation channels, having represented clients at all levels, from lower-level courts (which include various specialised courts) up to the Supreme Court, we also offer advice on mediation and negotiation for amicable settlement. Our prominent litigators have extensive experience and expertise in Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and are familiar with all types of ADR and the specific processes in Indonesia.

In striving to meet our clients’ needs and to resolve disputes in the most efficient manner with minimal negative business impact, we actively explore all possible modes of dispute resolution and guide clients on selecting the mode that is most suitable for them and their matter. We assemble the best team of attorneys based on the specific issues and relevant industries of each case in order to achieve the best outcome for the client.

We have a talented roster of antitrust practitioners with track record advising on and acting in a diverse array of anti-monopoly cases especially bid-rigging, cartel and preferential treatment cases across highly regulated industries such as energy, construction, real estate and infrastructure. Our capabilities in this practice include merger control analysis and filings, contract and policy reviews, internal investigations and post-acquisition report.

We assist clients in various matters, providing advisory, compliance, investigation and defense, and litigation services, including legal representation during all phases of the Commission for the Supervision of Business Competition (KPPU) proceeding, from initial summons and preliminary investigations, formal hearings to appeals to KPPU decisions concerning anti-competitive practices.

We are the go to people to translate complex competition law issues into practical advice and expert commercial, investigation and litigation strategies to help you maneuver through regulatory red tape to protect your business and achieve your goals.

From guiding early-stage startups through the entire life cycle of a company (organization and incorporation, investment and product/service structuring, licensing and compliance) to assisting with drafting and reviewing investment documents for late-stage fundraisings, Foster has frequently helped clients meet their business goals in Indonesia while remain in compliance with the relevant regulations in doing so, especially in strategic sectors such as fintech and financial services, digital payments, e-commerce, logistics, blockchain and healthcare.

Our knowledge and experience in these areas allows us to understand and anticipate the legal and business needs of our startup clients and to foster valuable business relationships between these clients and interested investors. Foster's Partners have demonstrated track record of advising investors on their investment structuring, capital injection, fundraising-related agreements and support them in their ongoing relationships with portfolio companies. In fact, several Partners of Foster have previously worked as general counsel and in-house lawyers of various prominent start-ups in Asia during the golden era of tech startups from 2016 to2023, having collaborated with many leading venture capital, private equity and angel investors in Indonesia and overseas in a plenty of fundraising matters.

We assist our startup clients with strategic legal advisory pertaining to founders’ arrangements, evaluating and structuring of initial investments from angel, seed and late-stage venture capital, additional financing rounds from early and late-stage investors, and also strategic early-stage regulatory advice for the market entry of foreign startups to Indonesia, including procurement of licenses for the start-ups to operate in Indonesia.

Foster's legal specialists in Shipping & Maritime provides a wide array of professional legal services to resolve legal disputes related to traditional shipping and maritime accidents like ship collision, fire, and sinking, loss or damage in international transport, including shipping contentious matters pertaining to charter contracts, ship constructions, ship management, bills of lading, cargo misdelivery and cargo loss/damage, demurrage or despatch and cargo quality claims, as well as bankruptcy of shipping and shipbuilding companies.

We also advise on transactional and commercial matters related to bills of lading, letter of credit transactions, ship sale and purchase, ship financing, ship mortgage, marine insurance, port and harbor affairs, including mergers and acquisitions in the shipping industry.

Foster understands the formidable challenges that clients encounter in sudden or emerging crises triggered by catastrophic events such as significant government or regulatory investigations and material sanctions, product recalls, public or consumer class actions, shareholder activism, cybersecurity attack and data security breaches, or alleged compliance or governance failures that result in reputational damage or financial loss or both. The aftereffects of these emergency situations can also pose significant peril with the potential for a ripple of effects in other legal proceedings brought by allegedly affected individuals or businesses. The aforesaid issues, various forms of crises and emergencies often call for fast action and require attorneys with the knowledge and experience to move swiftly to help companies navigate what can quickly develop into enterprise-level risk issues, by gauging the risk, coordinating a well-planned crisis response when needed, conducting effective internal investigations, developing proactive compliance and risk mitigation strategies.

Our primary goal is to devise a systematic approach—in full coordination with other Foster team members—across different yet relevant practice group—to precisely analyze, control and cautiously manage the central threats to the client’s interests arising from the crises, thereby giving our clients the highest probability of achieving their immediate and long-term crisis resolution goals while minimizing disruption and adverse business impact. We then proceed to deal with these risks in a progression intended to create the optimum scenario for success, aimed at obtaining the most favorable results possible as we strive to assist our clients to emerge from crises as quickly as possible with minimum financial, reputational, and political harm while the client team keep the business running through the ordeal.

Lawyers on our experienced crisis-management team provide clients with sound advice and a coordinated response to help them navigate any crisis. They have the experience and skills needed for mitigation and proactive engagement during the crises to employ an incisive, practical and business-focused approach for the purpose of addressing such emergencies. In doing so, we understand the importance of combining rapid response during the first critical hours and days of a crisis with strategic guidance to mitigate long-term legal, business, governmental, regulatory, and public relations impacts.

In addition to our expertise and experience guiding clients in the midst of an on-going crisis that require our lawyers to establish and manage both the initial and long-term legal strategies and assisting with remediation efforts, we also help clients avert crises by assessing, designing and retooling compliance programs and governance protocols, crafting diagnostic risk assessments that efficiently detect and address threats to clients’ operations, and implementing actionable insights based on careful and precise assessment of the situation, factual evidences and data. We advise clients on the formulation of proactive strategies ahead of time on “clear days” to proactively identify, review and mitigate potential crises or legal risks before they materialize into crisis scenarios, including by creating holistic advance crisis management and emergency response plans which can provide our clients with proper grounding and effective structure in the critical early hours of a crisis.