Hong Kong hot spot for lawyers
US law firms boost presence in city as mainland campaign against corruption and review of regulatory risks spur demand for legal advice
When Cathy Palmer first came to Hong Kong as a US prosecutor more than 20 years ago, she was chasing heroin-smuggling triads who later sent a booby-trapped package to her Brooklyn office.
Since March, she has been in the city, "talking to people about tough things" to help clients of Latham & Watkins deal with mushrooming investigations into potential crimes and corporate misconduct.
Palmer's US law firm is not alone in boosting its presence in the city, home to the Asia headquarters of Wall Street banks including JP Morgan Chase.
Proskauer Rose, Debevoise & Plimpton and Ropes & Gray have added lawyers in the city since Beijing started its bribery probe of GlaxoSmithKline and US investigations of jobs given to the children of government officials by banks began.
"Hong Kong and Asia weren't traditionally seen as a hot spot for US litigators," said Bradley Klein, an investigations lawyer with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom who moved to Beijing from Washington two years ago before moving to Hong Kong. "In the last three to five years, that's changed completely."
The Glaxo case was a wake-up call for global companies that assumed their main regulatory risk was in their home country, Klein said. "This opened up a new front and the risk of having to juggle multiple investigations in multiple jurisdictions," he said.
China fined Glaxo US$489 million last month for bribing doctors to help sales of its drugs after an investigation that lasted almost 15 months. The fine was the biggest corporate penalty ever in the country, Xinhua said.
