This article first appeared on June 27, 2017 in ALB Insights, a weekly, ad-free newsletter that is sent to subscribers. To purchase your subscription, please email Amantha at amantha.chia@thomsonreuters.com or call her at +65 6870 3917.
Ropes & Gray has had a tumultuous few months, with a string of partner exits in key offices, including Hong Kong. But managing partner David Chapin tells John Kang that the firm remains unruffled as it continues to focus on funds work in Asia.
Recently, Ropes & Gray has seen a raft of partner exits from key offices. This month alone, two partners in its London office left, another in New York defected, and the firm’s headquarters in Boston lost two partners.
The departures are also happening in Hong Kong, which shed six partners since the start of the year. Funds partner Geoffrey Chan quit in January to lead Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom’s Asia-Pacific investment management practice while litigation partner Patrick Sinclair moved to Davis Polk & Wardwell in April. A few weeks later, a four-partner team – office head Paul Boltz, together with corporate partners Brian Schwarzwalder and Michael Nicklin, and private equity partner Scott Jalowayski – switched to Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.
Despite the recent partner exits in the Asian financial hub, David Chapin, Ropes & Gray’s managing partner, is unruffled. “It’s part of the natural lifecycle,” he says. “We wish everybody well, but for us, it’s business as usual. Hong Kong remains a central part of our strategy, and our commitment to the region remains as strong as ever.”
The Hong Kong office now has 42 lawyers, including 11 partners. Among the partners, three are focused on M&A and PE work, an area where Chapin says the firm remains very strong.
In the same month that the four-partner team decamped to Gibson Dunn, Ropes advised Baring Private Equity Asia on its $1.8 billion sale of British breakfast cereal brand Weetabix. The Ropes team was led by partners Will Rosen, based in London, and Peng Yu, one of the three PE partners still in Hong Kong.
“We don’t have any immediate plans to replace those six partners that have left the firm and don’t feel that we have any significant holes in our service offerings for clients,” shares Chapin. “We’ll be opportunistic, but it’s not a situation where we feel we have to go out in the market and find four or five bodies to replace.”
‘STEADY AS SHE GOES’
Ropes opened its Hong Kong office in 2008, its second in Asia after setting up in Tokyo a year earlier, and was headed by PE partners Alison Bomberg and Scott Jalowayski. Both have since left the firm – Bomberg in 2015 and Jalowayski in April this year.
But the Big Law firm has also been adding partners in the region since then, recruiting M&A specialist Jieni Gu in Shanghai and PE partner Daniel Yeh in Hong Kong, both from Weil, shortly after Bomberg left.
“It’s natural to see both people joining and people leaving over the relatively early days of having offices opened as part of an international firm,” explains Chapin. “It’s certainly not surprising and not something we haven’t seen with almost every international firm that’s opened offices in Asia.”
Several other U.S. firms have fared much worse than Ropes in Hong Kong. For example, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe lost nine partners – most of whom based in the city – to Morgan, Lewis & Bockius earlier this year. Last year, Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft closed its Hong Kong office, and a year before that, Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson also pulled out from the city.
Bingham McCutchen, which beat Ropes as the first Boston-based firm to set up a Hong Kong office in January 2007, is now part of Morgan Lewis, having been acquired in November 2014. Bingham’s last partner in Hong Kong joined Mayer Brown JSM just over a month later.
Despite a number of U.S. firms struggling in Hong Kong, Chapin remains optimistic about Ropes’ prospects. “The capital flows in and out of Asia has been much more focused on the funds, and there are a lot of great opportunities for firms like us that are focused in that space where we can help people raise capital and then invest capital throughout the region and cross-border,” he notes. “I’m bullish not just about the Hong Kong legal market but more broadly about the opportunities in Asia.”
“We have a very deep bench, which includes talented counsel and senior associates, who may now have opportunities to advance and make their own mark in the Ropes & Gray offices across the region,” he adds. “It’s very much steady as she goes.”
To contact the writer, please email john.kang@tr.com.