Jones Day expands in Asia with the opening of a Singapore office

Cleveland firm Jones Day Reavis & Pogue is opening an office in Singapore, its eighth outpost in Asia and its 25th worldwide.

The firm has gained approval to practise from the Singapore authorities and plans to open its doors in January next year.

Head of the firm's Indian practice Jay Pathak is moving in to head the office, which Jones Day hopes will house 10 lawyers by the middle of the year. Associates will be transferred in from the London and Paris offices, and there will be lateral hires to beef up the capability.

The office will do M&A, finance, project finance, technology and dispute resolution work, servicing work that the firm says is already there.

Coordinator of Jones Day's Asian activities Jim Baumoel says: "We believe, as do a lot of clients, that Hong Kong is fast becoming a very important Chinese city, and Singapore is becoming a much more important Asian city outside China. A number of our clients are establishing secondary offices in Singapore as well as the ones they have in Hong Kong, and we go where the clients go."

Jones Day's clients in Asia include investment bank Lehman Brothers and Malaysia's biggest telecommunications company Measat, for which it does mainly securities work.

The firm has three Asian offices in China, in Taipei, Shanghai and Hong Kong, as well as one in Tokyo, two in India and one in Sydney. In India, the firm is affiliated with local practice Pathak & Associates.