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The Asia Chronicles: Quick Notes

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[Ed. note: This post is authored by the Asia Recruiting Team at Kinney Recruiting, sponsor of the Asia Chronicles. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates and partners in Asia than any other firm in the past two years. You can reach them by email: asia at kinneyrecruiting dot com.]

Notes Regarding Recent News from Hong Kong/China

Greetings to our readers. Robert Kinney here. I’m fresh from a visit to our Hong Kong office, where I had a big week with literally dozens of client meetings over 10 days. It is difficult to conceive of for most of our readers who are not in Hong Kong/China already, but the legal market there is red-hot. It is probably hotter in many ways than in the boom-times of 2006-2007. The pockets of activity are more hidden than before though, and the requirements are much tougher.

Our head of Asia will be speaking this evening (Monday, September 27, 2010) from 7:30 to 9:30 PM at NYU’s Vanderbilt Hall (40 Washington Square South, Room 204) as part of a panel discussion on the best strategy to land a job in the current job market in Asia. As always, we are grateful to the US-China Legal Exchange Foundation, as well as well as the NYU Asia Law Society and the NYU APALSA for the opportunity to speak as part of this panel. Any of our readers who are located in New York and are interested in hearing the latest information about the job market in Asia, particularly Hong Kong/China, please feel free to attend the discussion. It will certainly be instructive.

For the benefit of those readers who are not in New York but are still interested to hear what has changed in Asia, I have the following notes regarding current openings. Please feel free to follow up with me if you have any questions or want to drill into deeper into the needs described:

• Many of our clients are looking for Hong Kong qualified capital markets associates. The most impressive mid-levels to seniors in HK are now perhaps in more demand than any other group of biglaw associates, due to the current trend of top US firms building HK local practices (we know of two US firms about to make announcements regarding lateral HK partner hires).

• A number of our clients want US capital markets associates; several of these offer a mix of M&A and capital markets work.

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• One client is planning to have the best regulatory practice in the region, and they want to add someone at mid-level or higher who is a regulatory-oriented lawyer to handle banking, anti-corruption, and other regulatory matters.

• Several clients have ambitions to hire very specific prominent partners; we are on the trail of several.

• One client wants a banking/finance mid-level associate, and language skills are not necessarily a must.

• One client has a need for a New York trained finance lawyer with extensive experience with private equity finance. This is a senior level position that requires no language skills (other than English) and could lead to quick partnership for the right person.

• We have several openings in Korean practices.

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• Three clients are seeking fund formation associates.

These are just a few notes from the top of my head. We are still synthesizing our notes from the meetings and updating the candidates with whom we are already working about needs first. If you are interested in practicing in Asia and we do not already know you, please get in touch with me or Alexis so that when the time is right, you are on our radar screen.

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