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The Asia Chronicles: News of Asia Placements, Some Openings and State of Market

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Asia Chronicles logo.jpg5.28 kinney rev.jpg[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.]
Apologies for the delay in getting another post up. We have been extremely busy the past couple of weeks with extensive travel and also a great run of new placements in Hong Kong / China. Yes, after going from February through April having just one placement in Asia (after 3 in January), we had a nice run last week, with four US associate, one US counsel and one US partner placement, all in Hong Kong. Further, Robert made a partner placement in Texas and I made one in Florida in the past week. We expect 4 to 5 new Asia placements (all in Hong Kong), including one partner and counsel, in the next few weeks. The practice areas involved with the current recent and expected Asia placements are M&A, cap markets and fund formation.
Next week, Robert, Daniel and I will be again in Hong Kong and Yuliya will be traveling back to Russia. Yuliya will be in Russia for three months. Of course, Alexis is in Hong Kong, per usual, as that is her home base.
The slow down in placements in Asia the past few months (up until this past busy week) has of course been market related and although we are seeing a lot of positive signs for a rebound, especially in China, we expect a still very slow (relative to ’06 to mid ’08) lateral associate hiring market in Asia for the foreseeable future and well into ’10. February and March were the first months in over two years that I had no Asia placements, so things were really dead there for a while and there has been steady improvement since then.
Keep in mind though that our increased placement numbers recently are in large part due to our adapting to the current tough climate, rather than the market heating up significantly. Further, numerous US firms have hiring freezes globally, including Asia markets, and many US firms in Asia are quite overstaffed, due to focus on the busy and lucrative IPO market the past several years (hard for some US partners in Asia to get clearance for needed hire, when plenty of cap markets associates are available on site for re-tooling). Thus, while M&A and other practice areas in Asia, especially in China, look to be on the rebound, it will take a) IPO work in Asia to rebound, as wells as b) US markets to rebound, before the Asia lateral markets can return to the previous sizzling levels. The former is important in order to get entire offices busy, not just a certain practice group, and the latter is important to slow down the flow of US candidates from US markets.
***More after the jump.


Junior lateral candidates for Asia now are especially feeling the pinch because it is of course easier for firms to re-tool juniors (compared to mid-levels) and also send juniors from US to Asia on secondments, as needed. There was also a bit too much hiring of juniors in ’06, ’07 and ’08 in Asia, due to major understaffing issues and not enough qualified more senior associates on the market. Thus there are plenty of ’06s and ’07s in Asia already (does not mean an impressive ’06 or ’07 cannot be placed now, as I did place two ’07s in January and have a few ’06s and ’07s interviewing now, but challenging).
The Hong Kong placements we have made just recently, as well as the 4 to 5 more (including one partner) that we expect to make in the next few weeks, have been time consuming and challenging endeavors, not simply a case of emailing resumes around (in a hot market, recruiters / consultants can easily make placements this way, sort of by default, although we don’t).
Here is a sampling of current the more urgent openings (not all of course) we have in Asia now:
-Beijing – PE / M&A, mid-level, Mandarin required.
-Hong Kong – PE / M&A, mid-level, Mandarin required
-Hong Kong – Energy with Liquid Natural Gas experience. mid-level to senior, Mandarin plus but not required.
-Beijing – cap markets, mid-level, Mandarin required
-Beijing – M&A, senior associate / counsel, Mandarin required
-Shanghai – M&A, senior associate / counsel, Mandarin required
-Tokyo – project finance, junior to senior, Korean required
-Hong Kong – PE / M&A, junior to senior, English only ok
-Hong Kong – IP Transactional, mid-level, Mandarin required
-Hong Kong – finance, junior to mid-level, Korean required
-Tokyo – M&A / cap markets, mid to senior, Japanese required
All the above firms are being very selective and interview processes in this market, in general, take much longer than in normal market conditions. “More urgent” is relative to other openings in general, not necessarily an indication that such openings will be filled very quickly.
In our last post, we gave a very brief overview of the background of an associate placement in today’s climate in Asia, from our law firm client side of things. As promised, we now turn to the associate client side, although please understand that we can’t provide much in way of detail on this, due to the strict confidentiality involved. We can say that there is a common theme with these recent placements – a very long-term process, relative to what would typically be the case in a normal hiring market (although even in a hot market, many associates contact us a year or more before they are ready to move).
For example, one of the placements, occurring a few days ago, is a mid-level that was referred to me last summer. She was concerned about slowing deal flow in NYC and felt that her particular practice would perhaps be better suited in Hong Kong. We started the job search in September ’08. Although she has a perfectly suited practice background, from a top 10 firm, to go along with stellar academics, no Mandarin (or any other Asian language skills) and a very tough lateral market made things challenging. Further, the candidate has no obvious connection to Hong Kong and understandably was only interested in making a move to a peer firm. One of our firm clients showed interest in September, but do to market conditions did not interview until February. There were two rounds of interviews in NYC, one with HK partner, another with NYC partners. There were also several phone interviews with HK partners, a VC from NYC and a fly out to HK.
In a normal market, there would not be near as many rounds of interviews, but in today’s market firms are going to be very cautious and selective. Ultimately, there were three finalists for this position and I represented all three finalist candidates (as well as a few others that were interviewed in early rounds). The other two finalists are also long-term clients, with one being referred to me three years ago (resulted in a lateral placement in NYC then) and the other a candidate that initially contacted me two years ago (to discuss tentatively planned move to HK in couple of years). All three finalists for this position happen to be based in NYC and I have met with each of them numerous times and have had too many phone conversations to count.
The other two finalists described above are also among three finalists for a similar opening in HK about to be filled. The other finalists for that position is also a NYC based mid-level and she initially contacted me in September ’08 (as is typical in this market, despite stellar credentials, it has been an 8+ month job search thus far, due to market conditions and also understandable selectivity on part of candidate and firms).

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