Hong Kong Is Hot Spot for U.S. Lawyers as Probes Rise
When Cathy Palmer first came to Hong Kong as a U.S. prosecutor more than 20 years ago, she was chasing heroin-smuggling triads who later sent a booby-trapped package to her Brooklyn office.
Since March, she has been in the Chinese city, “talking to people about tough things” to help clients of Latham & Watkins LLP deal with mushrooming investigations into potential crimes and corporate misconduct.
“Hong Kong and Asia weren’t traditionally seen as a hot spot for U.S. litigators,” said Bradley Klein, an investigations lawyer with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP who moved to Beijing from Washington two years ago before moving to Hong Kong. “In the last 3 to 5 years, that’s changed completely.”
The Glaxo case was a wake-up call for global companies that assumed their main regulatory risk was in their home country, he said. “This opened up a new front and the risk of having to juggle multiple investigations in multiple jurisdictions,” Klein said.
China fined Glaxo $489 million last month for bribing doctors to help sales of its drugs after an investigation that lasted almost 15 months. The fine is the biggest corporate penalty ever in China, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The investigation of whether Wall Street’s hiring practices violated U.S. anti-bribery laws has expanded in another direction. Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption has opened a probe and interviewed JPMorgan bankers in the city, who have needed individual legal counsel.
Source: bloomberg- Hong Kong Is Hot Spot for U.S. Lawyers as Probes Rise
