Hogan Lovells has announced a new formal association with Fujian Fidelity Law Firm, a 170-lawyer firm based in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone. The firm already has offices in Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai, with the latest tie-up growing its Asia presence to seven offices. Hogan Lovells partners Andrew McGinty and Zhen Feng have been appointed to manage the alliance between the two firms.

Slow liberalization

Fujian Fidelity is spread across seven offices and specialises in corporate matters and M&A, insolvency and liquidation, financial securities, real estate and construction, arbitration and litigation work. The alliance between the two firms has been approved by the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Justice as a ‘contractual joint operation’, under which the firm’s will remain separate entities. Other firms that have struck alliances in China in recent years in order to make the most of the country’s slow liberalization of its legal market include Baker & McKenzie, Dentons and McDemott Will & Emery.

Source: The Lawyer; BigLaw Business