Deloitte Sign

The Hong Kong legal arm of Big Four accounting firm Deloitte has hired two more partners from China's Zhong Lun Law Firm.

Partner Victor Yang and senior consultant Eliza Chan, both corporate lawyers, will join Deloitte's affiliated firm, J. E. Jamison & Co., as partners, according to a source familiar with the matter. Deloitte and Yang declined to comment.

Yang focuses on foreign direct investments, capital markets, taxation and wealth planning. He is a founding partner of Canadian firm Boughton Peterson Yang Anderson, now known as Boughton Law Corp. In 2015, the firm's Hong Kong office merged with Zhong Lun and became the Chinese firm's Hong Kong office, where Yang served as managing partner until 2017.

Chan specialises in mergers and acquisitions. She was previously a consultant at Boughton Peterson Yang Anderson, and senior partner at legacy Jewkes Chan & Partners, which was a Hong Kong association firm of legacy Bryan Cave.

Yang and Chan will join former Zhong Lun partners Peter Chen and Danny Lau, who made the same move last month. A fifth partner at  J. E. Jamison & Co. is name partner and Deloitte China general counsel James Jamison, who launched the firm in January. Patrick Yip, Deloitte China's vice-chair, said last year that the Hong Kong law firm will have 25 lawyers, including a total of six partners.

Deloitte's Big Four rivals have already hired core partners for their own affiliated Hong Kong law firms. Since last year, EY's LC Lawyers and PricewaterhouseCoopers' Tiang & Partners have hired five partners and four partners, respectively, all from international firms; and KPMG's SF Lawyers has recruited three partners since its launch in January.