CBLA ‘s January 29 program at Fordham was well attended, with well over 200 attorneys having reserved a spot and a good turnout. If you would like to view “China and the FCPA – Challenges for the 21st Centure”, a video of the entire program will be available here (see below at end of this post for more details on the program).

Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting are available to meet any associates from other practice areas who are interested in an Asia move in the future. Feel free to reach out to them at [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected].

Up until only a few years ago it was very difficult, if not impossible, for a US litigation associate to transfer or lateral to Hong Kong / China. Going as far back as ’07, some managed to land offers to transition to transactional practices, but even those relatively rare transition opportunities became nearly impossible to land by late ’07 as many Mandarin fluent corporate / cap markets US associates sought have sought moves to HK / China since the recession of ’08 and ’09, coupled with the IPO boom in Hong Kong / China from mid ’09 to mid ’11 (a HK IPO boom may be back now – but that’s for our next Asia Chronicles post).

Today, there are still only a handful of actual FCPA / White Collar practice groups (with a number of US attorneys, including a head FCPA focused partner) on the ground at US firms in Hong Kong / China – at such firms as Davis Polk, Ropes & Gray, Kobre & Kim, Debevoise, Kirkland & Ellis, for example (Kinney has made a number of FCPA / White Collar associate placements in Hong Kong / China within this group of firms). There are many more firms that have thriving FCPA / White Collar practices in China and in Asia in general, but do not yet have an actual practice group based on the ground in Asia. Some of these firms in the latter category already have great expertise in FCPA in their US offices and have well established strong China clients, so it’s not 100% necessary to have a group on the ground in Hong Kong / China, but it would be convenient if for the right people (such firms are going to be more selective and usually have already a counsel and / or an associate or two on the ground in China already). Most of the firms falling in the latter category want to build an FCPA / White Collar team in Asia and have made some efforts to do so , but it’s easier said than done (especially if a firm is properly focusing on attracting FCPA clients in China with great expertise, rather than just having boots on the ground), due to the difficulty in finding a partner to start the group falling into one of two categories: