Linklaters, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, Jones Day and Sidley Austin have emerged as the successful bidders for the second round of Singapore's Qualifying Foreign Law Practice (QFLP) licences, seeing off competition from a raft of UK and international rivals.

The four global firms were among a list of 23 that applied for QFLPs in the period between 1 July and 31 August 2012, with other hopefuls including Berwin Leighton Paisner, DLA Piper, Ashurst, Olswang, Watson Farley & Williams and Stephenson Harwood, as well as US firms K&L Gates and Shearman & Sterling.

The new licences will allow the firms to practise Singapore law in all areas except domestic aspects of litigation and general practice, such as criminal law, retail conveyancing, family and administrative law.

Singapore's Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said that its evaluation and selection committees took into account the value of offshore work that the firm's Singapore office would generate, as well as the number of lawyers who would be based in Singapore and the practice areas the firm would offer.

They also considered the extent to which Singapore would function as headquarters for the firm in Asia, as well as the firm's global track record.

Successful firms now have up to six months from 1 April this year to commence their operations as QFLPs, with the licences valid for an initial period of five years.

Matthew Sheridan, a partner at Sidley in Singapore, said: "Right now, we are principally a corporate finance practice. But there are three areas where we see growth: funds, life sciences, and energy and infrastructure, and all the practices that come with that."

Likewise, Jai Pathak at Gibson Dunn said the firm will look at new practice areas: "We are already in M&A, private equity, infrastructure energy and financing. We will, with this licence, think about expanding into new areas such as international arbitration and international litigation, fund formation and related aspects of that work.

"This opens up a vast pool of talented local lawyers [we will look to hire from], particularly for the existing practice areas where we haven't hired Singapore-trained lawyers as we were not able to do so."

The small number of licences handed out is likely to have come as a disappointment to those that applied, some of whom were expecting around six or seven licences to be awarded.

It is understood the decision to grant just four could have been due to push-back from local firms, as well as a possible desire to restrict international firms' work to mostly cross-border transactions, capital markets work and arbitration where possible.

"Singapore law is a very small piece of the work we do in Southeast Asia," said Matthew Bersani, Asia managing partner for Shearman.

"[Most of what] we do is cross-border. So obviously, we're interested in acquiring that capability, but it doesn't have any short-term impact on us at all. If firms are doing a lot of Singapore law-related work, it matters more."

The decision to open up Singapore's legal market to international firms was first announced in 2008 in a bid to boost competition in the market and reinforce the city state's position as a global and regional legal services hub.

According to the MoJ, the nominal value of the legal services sector has increased by more than 25% since 2009, rising from S$1.5bn (£792m) in 2008 to around S$1.9bn (£1bn) in 2012, with particular growth seen in arbitration activities.

Related: Top 10 City quartet land Singapore licences.