Bird & Bird is set to open an office in Abu Dhabi, its first in the Middle Eastern region.  The firm hopes to be licenses by the end of the summer and will begin by focusing on the TMT, healthcare and life sciences, aviation and aerospace, clean technology and energy sectors. Corporate Partner Mark Pinder will lead the office, assisted by Telecoms Partner Tim Schwarz and a group of three associates. Abu Dhabi developer Mubadala has already employed the firm. Pinder has confirmed that there are no plans to open an additional regional office in the next two to three years and that the Abu Dhabi office will serve as a hub for the wider region.

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP has hired Maurice Hoo as a partner and co-head of the firm’s global Private Equity practice. Hoo was a partner at Paul Hastings for five years before this and had headed the China private equity practice there. He brings with him a client base comprised of some of the world’s top equity funds and financial institutions that he helped with in investments in China and other parts of Asia. He also currently serves as counsel to the China Venture Capital Association and the China Real Estate Developers and Investors Association.

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Lovells Beijing managing partner Robert Lewis has left the firm just before the firm’s impending merger with Hogan & Hartson to join Shanghai-based AllBright Law Offices as a senior legal consultant. Foreign lawyers are legally not allowed to be partners at domestic law firms in China. He will continue to interact with his former Lovells co-workers through the Sino-Global Legal Alliance (SGLA), a referral group he helped establish three years ago. SGLA is comprised of 13 Chinese firms along with Lovells.

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Lovells has promoted 21 new partners across its offices, the largest number of its lawyers promoted to partner since 2007 when it made up 13 lawyers to partner, before it rebrands and merges with US firm Hogan & Hartson in May. Six of the new partners are from Asia and the Middle East. The new partners will be officially promoted on the day that Hogan Lovells debuts, and they increase the total partnership to over 800 partners.

Hogan Lovells’ new partners in Asia & Middle East

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Ashurst’s India group head, Richard Gubbins, is focusing on Asia – specifically the Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Hong Kong offices – to be the focal points for its Indian presence after the Bombay High Court ruled in December 2009 that the Reserve Bank of India should not have granted the firm a license to open a liaison office, causing the firm to close its new Delhi office.Gubbins said: “We never practiced law there, so it had served its purpose from our point of view. We’re turning our attention to Asia - there’s very much a shift to targeting India from there rather than London.”

Gubbins will be based in London, but the firm’s India strategy will focus on four sectors, which will be overseen from Asian offices.

Keith McGuire will lead the Indian corporate offering from ­Singapore, while Matthew Bubb, also in Singapore, looks after the firm’s infrastructure offering alongside Dubai partner Joss Dare. Abu Dhabi partner David Wadham will head the Indian energy business, while the finance side is ­covered by the Hong Kong and Singapore offices.

Vinson & Elkins LLP has appointed Sami Al-Louzi as partner after enticing him to join the firm from White & Case, where he was a partner at the firm’s Riyadh office for six years. Al-Louzi’s practice focuses on mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, privatization and project finance, and has represented clients in the banking, private equity, capital markets, energy, and telecommunication sectors in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and elsewhere in the Middle East, and is a native Arabic speaker.

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Simmons & Simmons has replaced regional managing partner Paul Simpson with Tim Field. Field is a corporate practice partner at the firm’s Abu Dhabi branch and advised on the creation of Bear Stearns’ Middle East asset management, fixed income and investment banking operations. On the other hand, Simpson is a Dubai-based projects specialist.

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Linklaters’ Asia managing partner Zili Shao will leave the firm at the end of January to become chairman and CEO of JP Morgan’s China businesses.  He has been Asia managing partner since May, when after an election he replaced Giles White.

Shao specializes in M&A and private equity investments, and in his new position he will have responsibility for all of the investment bank’s operations in China.

Managing partner Simon Davies commented: “While Zili’s departure will be a great loss to the firm, we respect and support his decision to take on this exciting challenge with one of the world’s leading financial services institutions. It is a testament to the leadership qualitites of Linklaters’ many talented individuals that enables one of our own to move into roles of this nature.”

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Winston & Strawn have expanded their Asia presence by opening up offices in Beijing and Shanghai.  Xiangyang Ge, head of Baker & McKenzie’s China regulatory team, will join Winston & Strawn to head both bases.  He will focus on foreign investment work as well as cross-border M&A.  The firm has started that it has further growth plans for its China branches.

Managing partner Thomas Fitzgerald said: “We expect to continue our strategic expansion on a global basis and in regions widely viewed as having the greatest growth opportunities for the firm as well as its corporate clientele. As the world market continues to rebound from last year’s downturn, we see Asia, and China particularly, continuing to play an increasingly important role.”

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Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe has recruited Phoebus Chu, formerly a partner at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP, to join as a partner in the firm’s Hong Kong and Beijing offices.  Chu has over 15 years of experience in China and Hong Kong cross-border corporate finance, capital markets, mergers and acquisitions, and public company matters, and will work with Orrick’s team of corporate and capital markets lawyers in Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai.

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International firms planning on opening offices in Abu Dhabi may have to reconsider with the UAE pondering a moratorium on further office launches.Many firms have already entered Abu Dhabi in the past year, while a number of others are considering entering due to the attractive infrastructure and energy opportunities. However, the government is looking to avoid a repeat of the situation in Dubai, where the many offices launched between 2006 and 2008 had to fire numerous people after the local market declined.

A government source commented: “The government wants to avoid people becoming unemployed in the future - it would be a precautionary method.”

However, some argue that the existing regulations already control the market efficiently.

As Cypress has devoted more and more resources to the Middle East legal market, and as the markets there show substantial resilience to the global downturn, more and more lawyers are interested in taking off their shoes and jumping in the wadi.  But we’ve noticed that some women are still relatively hesitant to work in the region.   The reality is, however, that in the areas in which foreign attorneys work and live, a cosmopolitan multicultural society exists which ensures that women are not second class citizens.

The countries with the most active legal markets and which are most open to foreign lawyers are the United Arab Emirates (“UAE”), with law offices based in the major cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and to a lesser extent Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Expats make up between and 80-90% of the workforce in the UAE, with most expats coming from South Asia, so the local culture is only part of the equation.   About 3% of the population is considered “Western,” and while the locals are definitely more conservative than most Americans (as October’s “sex on the beach case” has highlighted), the country is much less conservative than many imagine.

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Ashurst has relocated partner Nick Williamson, a corporate specialist, to its Abu Dhabi office—the firm’s third partner in Abu Dhabi. Williamson’s practice focuses on M&A and corporate finance, with an emphasis on equity capital markets. He is also knowledgeable about the energy and natural resources sector, which should coincide well with the firm’s plans in the Middle East.

David Wadham, Ashurst’s office head at Abu Dhabi, commented: “Nick is an important part of the jigsaw for us here as he will add the corporate strength we need in Abu Dhabi. Also, his focus on ECM and the energy sector is very well suited to the type of work we target in the region.”

The relocation brings the total number of lawyers in Ashurst’s Abu Dhabi base to eight, while the Middle East practice has around 35 lawyers in total. The firm launched in Abu Dhabi in June last year, adding to its existing Dubai office in the region.

Zhonglun W & D is opening its first office in Riyadh.

Baker Botts is continuing the expansion of its Middle East offices by adding partners to its Dubai office and opening an office in Abu Dhabi due to increased demand for its legal services. Baker Botts now has 3 offices in the region, the third operating in Riyadh. The Abu Dhabi office will be headed by partner Greg Holden who will move from Washington DC.