Shearman & Sterling’s Hong Kong managing partner Edward Turner describes the year of 2003 in Hong Kong as one of “slipping and sliding” for a lot of firms, with many of the US contingent hunkering down to weather the Sars crisis as well as adverse general market conditions.
Given that the US firms generally have much narrower practices and fewer lawyers, Turner argues that they were less affected by difficult market conditions than the UK giants. There has, however, been some shake-out on the US side this year, with Cravath Swaine & Moore and Dewey Ballantine both pulling out of Hong Kong altogether, citing a lack of commercial activity as their rationale.
