Herbert Smith Freehills has asked two qualifying trainees in Hong Kong to bring forward their start date at the firm, after initially asking them to defer due to the slowdown in capital markets work in the region.

The firm is taking on five newly-qualified corporate lawyers, but three of the intake – who were set to join the M&A and capital markets practice – were asked to delay their start date from 1 September until 1 January.

However, the firm has now asked two of the trio to bring their start dates forward again.

The move comes after the firm last month confirmed that it had transferred fee earners from its Hong Kong equity capital markets team to alternative practice areas and other regional offices across Asia.

Andrew Tortoishell, managing partner for Greater China at the firm, which was forged through the 1 October merger between UK firm Herbert Smith and Australia's Freehills, said: "We're taking on five corporate newly-qualifieds, three to work in the M&A and capital markets practice. Those three were meant to start in January, but we had to bring one in early last week, and we had to give the other one notice that we may need to him at the end of November.

"It's not that we've got masses of new work to do, it's just with lending people to disputes and sending people out on secondment we may not have enough resource for the upturn we are seeing."

Tortoishell added that the firm would not be redeploying any more staff and would not be making any redundancies in Hong Kong, as it was focused on being prepared for the market picking up again.

"It is very hard to recruit good people in this market – the pool is very small," he said. "You cannot just get rid of all your people, because you cannot recruit them back. It's all about effectively getting them off the headcount temporarily and constructively in some way or another to [allow you] to get them back again.

"We know [the market] will pick up, it's just a question of when, and you have to keep managing it as best you can towards that end."

No partners were affected by the firm's decision to transfer capital markets associates from Hong Kong due to the slump in Asia's initial public offering (IPO) market.

Herbert Smith has traditionally had a strong Asia capital markets practice, with the firm advising on a number of high-profile deals. These include the $22bn (£13.6bn) listing of Agricultural Bank of China in June 2010, while the firm is currently working on the HK$4.6bn (£370m) IPO of Shanghai-based Fosun Pharmaceutical, the third-largest listing in Hong Kong this year.