Happy Chinese New Year! We were extremely busy the past few months, including most of our US based team working from our Hong Kong offices during November and December.

As a follow up from our recent post, which listed our 62 US associate and counsel placements in Asia last year (vast majority in HK / China), please note that thus far in January ’12, we have already made seven US associate and counsel placements in Asia. This is an especially impressive number, considering the biglaw lateral hiring market in Asia is down right now (see state of the market brief overview below). These new placements are of new hires in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, who were interviewing with their new firm for a month or more and they are spread out among different practice areas, including project finance, litigation, fund formation, M&A and cap markets. We are close on four additional new associate placements, in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai, that we expect to close soon. We do not discuss partner placements in these articles, but the pace of partner recruitment in Asia (a large part of our business) has continued.

Hedge Fund In-House Openings in Hong Kong

We are seeing a small run of new in-house openings in Hong Kong at hedge funds. We are currently filling three different in-house positions at three different hedge funds in Hong Kong, two of these searches we are handling on an exclusive basis. All three will most likely be filled by a US associate, with about 4 to 6 years of experience. Mandarin not required. Candidates from NYC and London will be considered, but at one of these funds the new hire will likely come from Hong Kong / China or Singapore (with HK being the strong preference).

Please feel free to reach out to us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you are interested in these hedge fund openings. As you probably would expect, the competition for these spots will be fierce and the funds will be very selective when choosing which candidates to interview.

Come join us this Thursday evening at NYU for an Asia career development seminar put on by the Asian Practice Committee of the New York County Lawyers Association. In the past, biglaw associates have found this type of event to be of great help when considering a move to Asia. Here is some basic info on the event:

Career Development in the Legal and Finance Fields

7:00PM - 9:00PM, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011

New York University

Room 212, Furman Hall

245 Sullivan Street

Co-Organizers:

Asian-Pacific American Law Students Association

US China Legal Exchange Foundation

Chinese Public Company Advisory Committee of UCCA

Culture and Career Club

Asian Financial Society

Interested in Asia or an Asia-focused legal or finance career? Want to find an Asian practice related job or grow your Asian practice? Curious about how to build your network and develop more career opportunities? Come join us at our career development panel with four experienced professionals in the legal and finance fields!

Topics:

1. The Asian job market for legal and financial professionals

2. Insiders’ tips on qualities that law firms and financial institutions look for in candidates

3. Insights from practitioners about how to grow your Asian practice

4. Professionals’ views on how to network and find more career opportunities in the legal and financial industries

Panelists:

Zhihui Julie Guo, Attorney from NY office of a top US law firm

Alex Hao, Partner from NY office of a top Chinese law firm

Kevin Pollack (Former lawyer and now fund manager)

Evan P. Jowers (Head of Asia recruiting at Kinney Recruiting)

When:

7 pm, Thursday, November 17, 2011

Where:

New York University

Room 212, Furman Hall

245 Sullivan Street

The lateral hiring market for biglaw US attorneys has slowed down substantially in the past four months.   We at Kinney have been fortunate to have continued a nice run of placements, but even our pace has slowed due to market conditions.  We have made 62 placements of US associates and counsels at law firms in Asia in 2011 thus far (the vast majority in Hong Kong/ China and not including partners or in-house placements), but 42 of those had come by the end of June.   Our pace would have slowed down even further had we not been successful in making a much larger than usual number of fund formation and litigation placements for a four month period.

Please see our list of 2011 Asia placements below:

Skadden – Hong Kong *
Milbank – Singapore*
Shearman – Beijing
Morrison & Foerster – Hong Kong*
Davis Polk – Hong Kong*
Skadden – Shanghai
Skadden – Beijing
Latham – Beijing
Latham – Hong Kong*
Latham – Singapore
Paul Hastings – Hong Kong *
Simpson Thacher – Hong Kong*
Ropes & Gray – Hong Kong
*
Ropes & Gray – Shanghai*
Orrick – Hong Kong
Orrick – Beijing
Clifford Chance – Singapore*
Clifford Chance – Hong Kong
A&O – Hong Kong*
Proskauer Rose – Hong Kong
Baker & McKenzie – Hong Kong
Freshfields – Hong Kong
Shearman – Hong Kong*
White & Case – Singapore
Linklaters – Singapore
O’Melveny – Shanghai*
Skadden – Singapore
Vinson & Elkins – Shanghai
CWT – Beijing
Debevoise – Hong Kong*
Kirkland & Ellis – Hong Kong*
Kirkland & Ellis – Shanghai*
Gibson Dunn – Hong Kong
White & Case – Beijing
Kobre & Kim – Hong Kong*
Shearman – Singapore
Hogan Lovells – Tokyo
Freshfields – Tokyo
* denotes multiple placements at the firm in question.

Please note that Robert Kinney and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong during the week of Sept. 25 and Evan will be in HK the following week as well. Alexis Lamb is permanently based in HK of course. Evan was also in HK last week (he is in Maldives this week on holiday, but can be reachable by email and phone if need be).

Check out our daily blog at theasiachronicles.com. Recent posts there include: “IPO’s (And Legal Work): From Gloom to Vroom”; “Hiring Spree in HK / China Fund Formation“; and “Korea – The Next Frontier – But When?“.

As we predicted in November, 2010, a COLA/Expat package of US$80,000 (annually) has become the standard in Hong Kong and China, up from $60,000. Please feel free to check out this link to see some of our recent articles on expat / cola allowances in Asia: http://www.theasiachronicles.com/archives/category/expat-packages

Most US and UK firms in Asia get us involved when they are considering any changes to their US associate expat / cola benefits package. In some cases we have even helped draft expat benefits policies for firm clients opening new offices in Asia. The reasons are quite simple: a) the hiring partners at these firms know us well after years of working together; b) they know we see more offer letters than anyone else in the market, from firms they consider relevant to them re associate recruiting; and c) unlike in other overseas markets (such as Moscow and Dubai for example), most US and UK firms in Asia tend to not share this information with anyone (recruiters, candidates or other firms), except when they provide offer letters. Thus, we have been asked for advice in this area from firms in Asia for years, going back to 2005. Without any doubt there is not any better source than our Kinney Asia team for major law firm expat / cola allowances in Asia.