Arete Advisors is a commercial negotiation advisory based in Singapore, serving organizations with complex commercial operations across Asia-Pacific and globally.
The firm's premise is that most negotiation problems are structural — rooted in process, incentives, and internal decision-making — not tactical. Fixing them requires diagnosis before prescription, and a level of practitioner experience that most delivery models can't sustain at scale.
Every Arete engagement is led directly by the firm's managing partner — from initial diagnostic through strategy design, deal execution, and capability building. This is not a firm that sells at the partner level and delivers at the associate level. The same practitioner who scopes the engagement is the one running the workshop, coaching the team, and sitting in the room during the negotiation.
Wai brings over twenty years of commercial experience across corporate operations, manufacturing, and negotiation advisory, with an MBA from INSEAD and a career built across the trans-Pacific corridor.
Before specializing in negotiation, Wai held operational and commercial leadership roles at US-based manufacturers, including a COO succession role at a firm serving pharmaceutical, semiconductor, and aerospace clients. That background grounds the advisory work in the realities of running a commercial operation, not just advising one.
Wai spent twelve years at a leading global negotiation consultancy, rising to partner and leading the firm's consulting and advisory practice across Asia-Pacific. That work spanned the full range of high-stakes commercial negotiation - from multi-market pricing strategy to cross-border M&A, distributor restructuring, and complex multi-party deals - across industries and geographies.
Arete Advisors was founded to deliver what large negotiation firms promise but structurally cannot: senior-level advisory and training, led directly by a practitioner with two decades of deal experience, without the dilution that comes with scaling through junior delivery teams.
The results speak for themselves: with Wai’s strategic guidance, we secured agreements with all four major customers (exceeding our initial plan of three), implemented a pay-for-performance model, and doubled the contract term from one year to two years.
sales & marketing director, consumer
"Intense. I wanted to address my own bad habits and found more than I had expected. I’m mentally exhausted but happy. Loved the (workshop) content and looking forward to the follow up coaching sessions."
VP Global materials, industrial
"Fantastic experience working with you."
business development, senior officer, shipping