In Hong Kong, Ince & Co Adds Three Partners, Expects Combination With Gordon Dadds
The sole partner of legacy Gordon Dadds' Hong Kong office has left the firm and its associate firm Justin Chow & Co. will not be included in the integration.
March 14, 2019 at 08:53 AM
4 minute read
Hong Kong
Legacy Ince & Co's Hong Kong office, an affiliate of the Ince Gordon Dadds International network, has hired three partners, while the sole partner of legacy Gordon Dadds' Hong Kong office has left the firm.
Ince & Co's Hong Kong office has hired partners Eric Lui and Ian Lo and a team of more than 10 fee-earners from local firm ONC Lawyers, including senior disputes associate Alfred Lau, who will join in April as a partner.
Lui specialises in banking, corporate finance, initial public offerings and cross-border transactions between Hong Kong and mainland China, and will launch a Hong Kong IPO practice at Ince & Co.
He leaves ONC Lawyers less than a year since joining from local firm Stevenson, Wong & Co, where he led the banking and finance practice. Before joining Stevenson, Wong & Co in 2010, Lui was an in-house lawyer at Bank of China Hong Kong.
Lo, who leads ONC Lawyers' construction and arbitration practice, focuses on litigation, arbitration and mediation matters arising from construction projects in Hong Kong and mainland China. He will launch a construction practice for Ince & Co's Hong Kong office when he joins in May. Before practising law, Lo was a building services engineer until 1999.
Meanwhile, legacy Gordon Dadds' Hong Kong team of sole partner Alan Ma and associate Ghulam Butt have both left the firm less than a year after joining from Ma's own firm.
Legacy Gordon Dadds opened the two-lawyer Hong Kong office – its first overseas – in July 2018. In October, Gordon Dadds agreed to acquire Ince & Co, including all nine of its offices. A few weeks after the Ince & Co merger announcement, Gordon Dadds' Hong Kong office formed a local association with three-lawyer boutique Justin Chow & Co. At the time of the association, Gordon Dadds chief executive Adrian Biles said Justin Chow & Co would be integrated with the combined Ince Gordon Dadds' Hong Kong office.
But on December 31, Gordon Dadds announced that it was only able to acquire Ince & Co's U.K. partnership; many of Ince & Co's overseas offices, including in Hong Kong, were not included in the financial integration and have since been operating as an affiliated network of firms.
Ince & Co's Hong Kong managing partner David Beaves has now confirmed that the Hong Kong office will eventually be integrated into Ince Gordon Dadds, likely by the end of the year. But a source familiar with the matter said the integration will not include Justin Chow's firm, which currently has four lawyers. Chow declined to comment when reached by phone.
This integration plan will effectively see Ince & Co's Hong Kong office take over as Ince Gordon Dadds' Hong Kong office; and Gordon Dadds' own eight-month-old Hong Kong office and association is removed from the combination.
With the three new partners, Ince & Co will have a total of nine partners in its Hong Kong office. In December, Ince & Co's Hong Kong-based former international senior partner Jan Heuvels left after 25 years and became an executive at Gordon Dadds' consulting arm, GD Consulting.
Biles did not immediately respond to a request for comment about what will happen to legacy Gordon Dadds' Hong Kong office, of which he is a non-resident partner.
Ince & Co also said in a statement that it is planning to grow its China practice across all practice areas. Besides Hong Kong, Ince & Co had a four-partner office in Shanghai and a one-partner office in Beijing, both of which were integrated into the combined Ince Gordon Dadds.
Related Stories:
Ince Gordon Dadds' Hong Kong Associate Firm Adds Partner
Gordon Dadds Forms Hong Kong Association Amid Ince Merger
Gordon Dadds to Acquire Ince & Co; Becomes UK's Largest Publicly Listed Law Firm
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