Ashurst to send Green to Hong Kong
Ashurst to send Green to Hong Kong" />Ashurst is to launch its first-ever office in China and has picked current senior partner Geoffrey Green to spearhead the initiative.
The silver circle firm is planning to open an office in Hong Kong at the beginning of next year. Green will relocate in February after stepping down as senior partner at Christmas.
Ashurst will be targeting corporate and finance work and will also send M&A partner Robert Ogilvy Watson to the special administrative region.
The highly belated move represents a change of gear for Ashurst’s Asia strategy, which has to date been focused on Tokyo and Singapore. ;The ;firm launched in Dubai in 2005 and is opening in Abu Dhabi early next year.
Green first unveiled the firm’s Asia growth ambitions to The Lawyer in December 2006, but at the time the indications were that the firm favoured a Shanghai presence to begin with.
Green told The Lawyer: “We’re behind in Hong Kong, but we happen to be quite well known there. We don’t see why the model we’ve developed in Europe can’t work, provided you can get the right people and are in the right sectors of the market.”
