US firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher has opened its second office in Asia – in Hong Kong.
The new office, which will focus on corporate transactions and corporate compliance regulation and investigations, will be anchored by new lateral hire Kelly Austin and staffed by partner Joseph Barbeau and associate Kate Yin, who will relocate from the firm’s Palo Alto and Los Angeles offices, respectively.
Austin joins the firm after an eight-year stint as GE’s compliance & litigation counsel for Asia- Pacific. In this role she led compliance matters, government investigations, and litigation and ADR proceedings throughout the region. She is widely regarded to have designed and run a “world-class” compliance program for the company. Prior to her time at GE, Austin practiced at Zukerman Spaeder in Washington DC and was appointed to serve as special counsel to the Executive Office of the President.
The firm’s chair and managing partner, Ken Doran, said the hire of Austin was a “key to [the firm’s] decision” to launch in Hong Kong. Austin added that the firm’s Hong Kong presence now means it will be able to service the lucrative North Asian markets — something which it has not be able to be entirely through its Singapore office. “Singapore is central particularly for South Asia and for India, but to provide service across the region, it made sense for us to have a Hong Kong office,” she told ALB.
As important is the growth in the area of corporate compliance. “Compliance issues in Asia present unique challenges and the risk of a local enforcement action for multinational companies operating in Asia is real,” said F. Joseph Warin, Co-Chair of the firm’s white collar crime group “Many of the US-based FCPA disclosure and enforcement actions in the last two years have had an Asia component, and combining on-the-ground expertise in Asia with extensive support from the US offices positions us to be particularly effective for clients,”he said. Since 1977, the United States Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) has brought action against 22 companies operating in Asia— a number that many expect to grow exponentially in the year ahead.
The firm launched its first Asian office in Singapore with a quadruple lateral hire from Jones Day in 2008. Jai Pathak, Gibson Dunn’s current Asia managing partner, joined the firm along with Emad Khalil, John Viverito and Saptak Santra.ALB
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