Two senior restructuring lawyers are to leave O'Melveny & Myers' office in Hong Kong; bringing the total number of departures from the firm's Singapore and Hong Kong bases since December last year to 13.

Partner Damien Coles and counsel Bronwen May are understood to be joining Hogan Lovells, and are the latest in a string of O'Melveny legal staff and partners to exit the firm in Asia recently amid reports of frustrations among some teams.

Others to have moved to rival firms this year include partner Mark Fairbairn, who joined DLA Piper in Hong Kong to head up the firm's Asia restructuring practice, and counsel Ashley Bell, who moved to DLA in Singapore, also to join the restructuring group.

Fairbairn was among a team a partners who joined O'Melveny from White & Case between 2008 and 2009 to help launch the Singapore office, alongside Bertie Mehigan, Huey Yann Thong and Joel Hogarth.

Private equity partner in Singapore Dean Collins left the firm shortly after Fairbairn to help set up a local base for Dechert, and has since been joined by associates Claire Bentley and Qinjian Wang.

Two other senior lawyers in Singapore, Siew Kam Boon and Timothy Tan, have also exited to join rival firms as partners, with Boon moving to K&L Gates in the city-state and Tan joining DLA in Bangkok.

In Japan, the firm has also reduced from five partners five years ago, to just one on the ground currently. Among the latest departures there was corporate partner Mangyo Kinoshita, who moved to White & Case in August last year.

Speaking to Legal Week, sources said lawyers felt unresourced and unsupported, and that plans for growth had not materalised.

However in a separate interview, O'Melveny chair Brad Butwin insisted that the Asia practice was of high importance to the firm but that management had taken a more global approach to growth.

In Japan for example, he said the firm was working for more clients despite having fewer lawyers in Tokyo.

"Asia is a very different market from the US, but make no mistake, we are committed to it," Butwin said.

"These days we are not quite as focused on large on-the-ground staffing in any one office, we find that that is less important than it once was… We're much more interested in connecting our work that comes in and out of Asia with the rest of the firm, than we are with figuring out a particular office's desired headcount."

In line with this strategy, he said the firm was prioritising growth in Hong Kong, albeit in core practice areas. In Singapore he said there could be some hires in disputes.

"In Hong Kong I think to be fair we can do a better job of building out – we are too small… We are actively looking to grow in disputes, capital markets, and M&A and I'm confident that we will be able to do so.

"I'm not sure I would characterise it as simply looking to replace people because it may well be that some of the areas that we are growing in tend to be more strategic, and so new hires might not actually be in the same areas where people practiced before they exited the firm.

"We have a much better shot in growing firmwide through Hong Kong than pick your office and simply growing the office – where we might be growing revenues but it may or may not be connecting as much with our strategic firmwide clients."

Currently the firm has 95 legal professionals across Asia, compared with 120 in 2008. However, the firm says it has 17 Asia partners now compared with 13 six years ago.

Lawyers to have left the firm's Hong Kong and Singapore office since December 2013 include:

1. Ashley Bell (counsel, Singapore)
2. Mark Fairbairn (partner, Hong Kong)
3. Timothy Tan (counsel, Singapore)
4. Siew Kam Boon (counsel, Singapore
5. Dean Collins (partner, Singapore)
6. Claire Bentley (associate, Singapore)
7. Qinjian Wang (associate, Singapore)
8. Damian Coles (partner, Hong Kong)
9. Bronwen May (counsel, Hong Kong)
10. Nick Withers (associate, Singapore)
11. Robert Carlon (associate, Hong Kong)
12. Nicole Carragher (associate, Singapore)
13. Maisy Chee (associate, Singapore)