Jones Day limbers up for Asia Pacific finance push

Jones Day Reavis & Pogue is ramping up its new Singapore office with two new partners from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Denton Wilde Sapte.

The Cleveland firm opened its Singapore office at the start of this year, after The Lawyer revealed its plans in October (The Lawyer, 30 October).

Now it is taking on Freshfields US securities partner John Chrisman, who is leaving the firm's London office and returning to Asia (The Lawyer, 18 December). He will spend six months in Singapore before joining the firm's Sydney office as its second partner.

Joining Chrisman is Denton Wilde Singapore partner David Longstaff. He specialises in corporate and commercial work, including finance, joint ventures, project finance and banking-related work.

Jones Day partner Jai Pathak, who specialises in M&A work and heads the firm's Indian practice, is moving in to run the office. Another Jones Day partner will be transferred to the office to do project finance early this year, and more lateral hire partners are planned.

Jones Day's clients in Asia include Malaysia's biggest telecoms company Measat and investment bank Lehman Brothers.

Chrisman says: "I'm going to help build the practice in Singapore, particularly in US securities, but also to a lesser degree in US M&A. Also, long term, I'll help to ensure proper bridges are built between our Asian offices, including Sydney."

Chrisman's investment banking clients include Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and UBS Warburg. He plans to build on these relationships, service existing clients and root out new work. He says: "David Longstaff already has an established Singapore practice. The rest of us will be building our practices for clients who really want us to be there."

When Chrisman moves to Sydney he will join partner Andrew Reilly and will continue to work closely with Singapore. Jones Day's Australian practice does only US securities law and US M&A.