It is the first Asian outpost for the firm, and will provide clients in the city-state with both Guernsey and Jersey law. In a statement, Collas Crill said it plans to “work closely with our clients and contacts in Guernsey, Jersey and the UK to build stronger business links between them and Singapore”.
Sean Cheong, a partner in Collas Crill’s Guernsey office, has relocated to Singapore to head up the new office, located in the North Tower of One Raffles Quay. She has been joined there by office manager Rachel Leong.
The first Channel Islands-based firm to open in Singapore, Collas Crill joins a handful of international law firms there, including Conyers Dill & Pearman, which arrived in 2001, and Walkers, present in Singapore since 2009.
Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Herbert Smith, Latham & Watkins, Norton Rose and White & Case obtained Singapore law licences in 2009, The Lawyer recently noted, in an article which also reported that Withers is planning to move two partners to Singapore later this year “once the partnership has given its approval”.
News of Collas Crill’s Singapore office comes in the wake of revelations by both Clifford Chance and Allen & Overy of plans to open offices in Casablanca, citing the Moroccan city’s growing importance as a hub for businesses targeting Africa.
Last month, Jersey-based Ogier announced it had opened an office in Shanghai, in a move that Ogier chief executive Nick Kershaw said made it “the first offshore firm to have an office in mainland China [as well as] the only offshore law firm in Asia with lawyers qualified to offer advice on the key jurisdictions of BVI, Cayman, Guernsey and Jersey”.
Like certain other service businesses such as accountancies and banks, law firms are actively seeking to expand into as many of the hottest new offshore markets as possible at the moment, in order to boost their appeal to their ever-more-multi-jurisdictional clients – both individual and corporate.
The attraction of the flourishing emerging markets is also seen by such law firms as a contrast with the lackluster business they are experiencing in many traditional markets, which in addition to being more mature, also continue to languish in the post-global financial crisis doldrums.
As reported, Jersey’s Crill Canavan and Guernsey’s Collas Day announced plans to merge last December, to create a 15-partner strong firm.
