Holman Fenwick Willan (HFW) has relocated its senior partner Richard Crump to Singapore with a view to growing its Asia practice.

Crump, who is one of three leaders at the firm alongside managing partner George Eddings and chief operating officer Alistair Mitchell, has been tasked with looking at potential areas for expansion, both in terms of new offices and practice areas.

He moved to the city earlier this month to join a team of eight partners.

He is understood to be the only global senior partner of a firm to move to Asia or Australia from the UK in recent years.

However, he is not the first management member to relocate, with DLA Piper sending its UK managing partner Andrew Darwin to Sydney in March last year.

The firm declined to give details of its plans for expansion, except to say it wanted to "plug the gaps" in its Asia practice, which would inevitably involve geographical growth and lateral hires.

It currently has six offices in Asia located in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore; Perth, Melbourne and Sydney, and 42 partners in Asia out of a total of 151 globally.

The decision by firms to send high-ranking partners to the region is not a new one, with Asia attracting increasingly more global practice heads and those involved in firm strategy.

A survey of 30 UK and US law firms by Legal Week in March last year found that 57% of those firms now have at least one global practice head, department co-chair or deputy chair based in Asia, with the majority of these appointed since the start of 2010.