Tony O'Malley, PwC's new Global Legal Services leader.

The Australia and Asia-Pacific head of the legal services arm of Big Four accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has been appointed the new global leader of the firm's entire legal services network.

Sydney-based Tony O'Malley will take on the new role June 1, from Heinz-Klaus Kroppen in Germany, who will leave PwC. "[The appointment] reflects the increasing importance of the Asia-Pacific region within the global legal network," O'Malley said.

The shift in leadership from Europe to Asia-Pacific reflects the broader economic shift, said O'Malley, noting that growth in the Asia-Pacific region was among the fastest in PwC's global legal network in recent years.

"The U.K. and continental Europe have been the beating hub for the legal network for many years, but if you look back the last 10 years, the Asia-Pacific has really accelerated and started to play a much bigger role in the network," he said. "It's a logical development."

The growth was particularly fast in Australia, where O'Malley built PwC's legal arm almost from scratch, going from two partners in 2014 to more than 30 partners today across offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

O'Malley joined the accounting giant in 2014 from an advisory firm he set up with partner Tim Blue. Both were former partners of King & Wood Mallesons, where O'Malley served as Australia managing partner for one year following the 2012 merger between China's King & Wood and Australia's Mallesons Stephen Jaques. Blue is also currently a partner at PwC.

During his tenure as Australia and Asia-Pacific legal leader, PwC significantly expanded in the region. In 2017, it launched an affiliated law firm in Hong Kong with former King & Wood Mallesons Beijing partner David Tiang; the firm more than doubled its partner count during the past 12 months to seven – all with experience from international firms including Baker McKenzie, Jones Day and Mayer Brown.

It also launched a new local law practice in Singapore by recruiting Rachel Eng, the deputy chair of leading local firm WongPartnership. In Tokyo, where it has had a member law firm since 2014, it made significant hires and now has three partners, having added Satoshi Mogi and Michito Kitamura from Clifford Chance in 2017 and top Japanese firm Nishimura & Asahi in 2016, respectively.

In his new role, O'Malley will oversee about 3,700 legal professionals in PwC's global legal network across 98 countries. To help him do that, O'Malley has appointed Eng in Singapore and Steffen Schniepp, legal services leader of Germany – where PwC has its largest legal practice globally – to its global legal leadership team. O'Malley plans to add two more to the team – one in the U.K. and one in continental Europe – in the coming weeks.

The four new members will join current leadership team members: Sydney partner Blue, Hong Kong partner Joseph Tse, Switzerland legal leader Günther Dobrauz and Washington, D.C.-based tax controversy and dispute resolution global leader David Swenson.

O'Malley said his top priorities will be to continue to expand in Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. Australia will also see more growth, particularly in government projects and financial services; the latter saw increased demand on the back of a 14-month public inquiry into Australia's financial services industry for unethical practices, which ended with a final report published in February, with 76 recommended changes to the industry.

Elsewhere, O'Malley said he will work closely with PwC's U.S. law firm – ILC legal, a non-U.S. law foreign legal practice in Washington, D.C. – to bring the non-U.S. part of the global legal network to U.S. clients. He will also continue to support growth in the U.K., where legal services head Ed Stacey recently told Legal Week of plans to recruit at least 50 financial services lawyers in the next 18 months.

And, he said he will, of course, continue to expand the firm's global legal network. "We admit new firms [into the network] on a regular basis – probably three to four a year," said O'Malley. Recently added members include MNKS in Luxembourg in November and CCR Legal in Portugal in March 2018.

O'Malley said PwC is about to admit a local law practice in Sri Lanka, a frontier market in south Asia – set to be the first among the Big Four accounting firms to do so – for projects and infrastructure work, as well as transactional and mergers and acquisitions support.

PwC already has the largest legal network among the Big Four by both number of legal professionals and number of markets covered – KPMG is the next largest with 2,300 legal professionals, while Deloitte and EY both have the second-largest presence, in about 80 jurisdictions.

PwC will likely continue its lead among the Big Four in terms of size and reach. "It's highly likely we'll tip the 100 [markets] mark in the next six months," said O'Malley. "And blow over the 4,000 [legal professionals] number in the next few years or so."

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