Withers opened its first Asian office, in Hong Kong, in 2008.
The firm, which has emerged as an oft-quoted source of information on the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and other recent American initiatives that have affected expatriates and companies doing business with the US, said its new office will open in May, in Raffles Place.
The announcement comes days after Singapore’s parliament passed amendments to its legislation that will enable foreign law firms to merge with local legal entities, and make it easier for foreign QCs to appear in Singapore courts, according to a recent article on the website of The Lawyer.
“One of the key changes will see foreign law firms be able to for the first time, take a profit and equity share in Singaporean law firms,” The Lawyer said.
In October, an article in the Straits Times, the main Singapore newspaper, noted that “one in five lawyers in Singapore comes from abroad – and the number of foreigners practicing here is set to rise”, as a result of the Singaporean government’s “ambition to make the Republic a worldwide hub of legal services”.
FATCA expert to head office
Jay Krause, a US qualified partner who currently specialises in servicing private clients, trust companies and financial institutions at the firm’s Hong Kong office, will relocate to Singapore to head up what is to be a new Asian wealth planning team. Krause is said to be an expert on US tax matters.
He will be joined in Singapore by Philip Munro, a private client tax, trust and estates expert who most recently been working out of Hong Kong and London.
Withers managing director Margaret Robertson said it had always been assumed that a Singapore office would follow once the Hong Kong office was up and running, and it was"only… a question of time" when exactly it would happen.
This, Krause noted, is because recent developments in international taxpayer information exchange have created “an overwhelming demand for [Withers’s] US and international tax expertise in Singapore, as well as its South East Asian neighbours such as Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand…India and Australia”.
“This need is increasing daily, as more and more Asian institutions begin to come to grips with the far reaching effects of the new FATCA legislation, [which requires] financial institutions and trust companies, among others, to identify their US clients and forward their details to local or US tax authorities,” Krause added.
Among the other international law firms to open offices recently in Singapore is Collas Crill, the law firm created last year by the merger of Crill Canavan in Jersey and Collas Day in Guernsey, which opened its doors in Singapore in August.
Other well-known foreign law firms already active in the city-state include Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Herbert Smith, Latham & Watkins, Norton Rose and White & Case.
Withers’s Singapore office opening is subject to regulatory approval.
