Over a six-month period, Milbank raided its Magic Circle rivals for five new partners in Hong Kong. The first of the quintet was Alex Tao, a capital markets partner at Allen & Overy who joined in June of last year. Then in January, John Bona and Davide Mencacci, from Linklaters, and Neeraj Budhwani and Andrew Whan, from Clifford Chance—all private equity and leveraged finance experts—defected to the New York-based firm.