Walkers

With a ‘deep bench of technically skilled lawyers’ at its disposal, many of which are ’well-versed with the business dynamics and culture of PRC clients’, Walkers’ well-established Hong Kong team has the depth and breadth of resources to handle a tremendous volume and range of transactional and disputes work. The ‘extremely commercial, knowledgeable and responsive’ Andy Randall leads from the front, combining his managing partner duties with a compelling corporate and finance practice that includes capital markets and asset finance expertise. The ‘pragmatic and user-friendly’ Kristen Kwok is also highly skilled at handling finance matters, including as it relates to structured finance and securitisation matters – where she is widely recognised as the go-to Cayman counsel for setting up offshore repackaging programmes for Chinese banks and securities firms. Investment funds work is also a core strength of the office across asset classes and geographies, with James Gaden, Denise Wong and Thomas Granger well-versed in hedge and private equity fund formation matters and pursuant transactional work. The team has maintained a strong deal flow in the space in spite of a retrenchment of US investors away from Chinese funds, picking up a slew of mandates including in relation to Japanese focused funds as investors re-allocate their capital flows. The ’pragmatic and client friendly’ Tom Pugh is ‘knowledgeable in offshore insolvency work’, and brings well-rounded perspective both in relation to offshore and onshore matters for a range of creditor and debtor-side stakeholders across a range of cross-border insolvency and restructuring matters. Under the guidance of the ’extremely knowledgeable and very responsive’ Colm Dawson, the firm also maintains a market-leading regulatory offering which spans the banking and investment management sectors, in particular.