Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP

Overview:

Davis Polk is one of the world’s premier law firms. Known for our skillful work in highly complex matters that are critical to our clients, we offer high levels of excellence and breadth across all our practices and specialties.

Our clients, many of them industry and global leaders, rely on the exceptional, collaborative service we deliver through our 10 offices worldwide. Their success is our core focus.

Our Hong Kong office, which opened in 1993, was one of the first opened by a major Wall Street firm in Hong Kong and is now our largest non-U.S. office. It currently consists of 11 partners, 9 counsel and more than 70 associates, and has been involved in many of the most important and high-profile capital markets, M&A/private equity transactions and litigation and enforcement matters in China and elsewhere in Asia.

As a leader in the Asian capital markets, our Hong Kong office routinely represents issuers and underwriters in many important (and frequently precedent-setting) cross-border initial public offerings, convertible debt, high-yield debt and other securities offerings. Our work has included many of the landmark transactions involving the privatization and listing of Chinese state-owned enterprises and we are a clear leader in Asian high-yield debt offerings.

Our M&A/private equity practice covers all major countries in Asia and a broad range of industries. Together with our Tokyo and Beijing offices, our lawyers in Hong Kong have extensive experience advising investors in structuring private equity transactions in Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, India and Southeast Asia.

Our market-leading litigation and enforcement practice consists of 2 partners, 3 counsel and a team of more than 10 associates. They will be working as part of a tight-knit team with the firm’s market-leading Hong Kong corporate and capital markets lawyers to provide compliance and corporate governance advice to clients.

Many of our regional practices are operated out of Hong Kong such as our India practice, Taiwan practice, Korea practice and more broadly, our Southeast Asia practice which covers key SE Asia jurisdictions including Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. We have teams of lawyers who specifically focus on these regions and actively travel across the continent to service clients.

All of our lawyers in Hong Kong are fluent in English of which 80% are also fluent in Chinese. Other languages spoken include Korean, Taiwanese, Malay, French, German, Hindi and Spanish. Lawyers in our Hong Kong office are admitted to practice Hong Kong, U.S. and English law.

Clients in Hong Kong include leading international investment banks, Hong Kong-based and Chinese investment banks as well as Hong Kong-listed companies and large conglomerates. Our client coverage also includes corporates across Asia Pacific as well as multinational companies who have interests in expanding into the region.
Areas of law: