Shearman & Sterling’s Hong Kong managing partner Edward Turner describes the year 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 have been 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 earlier this year, citing lack of commercial activity as their rationale.
