About
- Firm overview Walkers’ in Hong Kong has specialist Finance, Investment Funds & Corporate, Insolvency, Dispute Resolution & Restructuring and Regulatory & Risk Advisory practice groups with dedicated professionals that have a broad range of experience gained from some of the world’s leading onshore law firms, financial institutions, and regulators. The firm takes pride in their ability to develop creative and innovative legal solutions for clients within their commercial parameters. - Practice areas Finance: Walkers finance team offers a wealth of experience in capital markets, structured finance, asset finance, fund finance, and all aspects of general banking and finance. The team advise on debt and asset-backed securities, derivatives, structured products, and financing transactions involving high-value assets such as aircraft, ships, and rolling stock. Services also cover secured and unsecured financings, subordinated and syndicated lending, security issues, leveraged and acquisition finance, project finance, and cross-border real estate finance. Investment funds: The investment funds practice is one of the leading offshore fund practices covering hedge funds, private equity, and venture capital funds. Walkers advise on all aspects of offshore investment funds including fund formation, structural issues, regulation, distressed funds, fund re-domiciliation, termination and ongoing general advice to investment funds and managers. Corporate: The Walkers team advises corporates across all industries, financial institutions, and venture capital and private equity firms on all aspects of their corporate transactions, including public and private acquisitions and disposals, special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) and related transactions, take-privates, listings on major exchanges, corporate governance, reorganisations and restructuring. Insolvency, restructuring and dispute resolution: The team regularly advises existing stakeholders, international investment banks, creditors, debtors, private equity and hedge funds, financial institutions, companies, directors, law firms, insolvency practitioners, and other advisors on corporate and financial restructuring and insolvency matters. With expertise in complex, high-profile, cross-border restructurings and reorganisations, Walkers combine skills from the insolvency and the finance teams to manage both transactional and contentious restructurings. Regularly advising on the use of schemes of arrangement to effect the refinancing and/or reconstruction of a company’s affairs; on corporate, commercial, trusts and insolvency litigation and alternative dispute resolution issues. The focus areas include shareholder and boardroom disputes, urgent interim relief applications, and enforcement, including the appointment of liquidators and provisional liquidators. With extensive experience in the full spectrum of arbitration-related issues, from the drafting of legally binding and effective arbitration agreements to the recognition and enforcement of international arbitral awards. Regulatory and risk advisory: Walkers has a dedicated regulatory team based on the ground in Asia. The team regularly advises regulated and non-regulated financial institutions including a wide range of businesses in the banking, insurance and reinsurance, investment fund, administrator, fiduciary and investment management, advice, broker-dealer and arranger sectors on all regulatory applications and notifications, regulatory implications of mergers, acquisitions and reorganisations, all required policies, procedures and compliance monitoring programmes, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing, corporate governance and directors’ duties, fitness and propriety, regulatory aspects of transactional documentations and service provider agreements, and beneficial ownership and other issues. Walkers Professional Services: Walkers Professional Services (WPS) is the leading provider of corporate, company secretarial, regulatory compliance and fiduciary services to corporate and institutional clients across global financial centres. WPS understand a clients' need for both market leading expertise and value for spend and provide both. In an environment that is characterised by enhanced regulatory oversight and supervision of all types of alternative investment vehicles and structures, there is an overwhelming demand from clients for integrated legal, regulatory, compliance and corporate services. WPS help clients meet ever-changing legal and regulatory demands by developing bespoke solutions to reduce costs for outsourced corporate, compliance and fiduciary services and automated control functions consistently monitor client portfolios to ensure accuracy and integrity of entity data. - Jurisdictions of law - British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands and Bermuda - Contact us For more information about Walkers services and solutions across geographies and time zones visit walkersglobal.com
Practice areas
Lawyers in this office
Ally Lam
Ally advises on all aspects of an investment cycle, ranging from the upstream investment fund formation to the downstream investments, including pre-IPO transactions, mergers and acquisitions and joint ventures. She also represents companies in listings on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Taiwan Stock Exchange, Nasdaq and NYSE. She advises investment managers, private equity funds and corporates clients on a wide range of legal issues including fund formation and structuring, ongoing compliance and dissolution. Her practice also encompasses pre-IPO investments and series financing, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and general corporate matters. She focuses on the Asian market with clients from across the region including China, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore. Ally Lam is a member of our Corporate & Investment Funds Group. She is fluent in English, Mandarin and Cantonese. · Corporate / M&A
Andy Randall
Andy is the Managing Partner of our Hong Kong office. Andy's broad offshore law practice spans capital markets transactions, including securitisations, secured note programmes and derivative transactions, asset finance work including shipping and aircraft financing, leveraged acquisition financings, property and project financings. He has a strong general finance practice and is routinely instructed by a large number of the world's leading international banks, financial institutions, major public and private companies, transaction arrangers and leading onshore law firms. · Capital Markets
Colm Dawson
Partner · Regulatory Compliance
James Gaden
James is a partner in our Investment Funds Group and Corporate team in Hong Kong. James has over 21 years' experience advising the investment funds industry. He specialises in advising private equity and hedge fund managers on a broad spectrum of legal issues including fund formation and structuring, acquisitions and disposals, fund restructuring and fund financing In addition, James has an active corporate practice which includes providing general corporate advice on corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions and joint ventures. He also advises companies, LLCs, partnerships and their investors in relation to a variety of different financing transactions. James advises clients from across the region including in Hong Kong, China, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Australia. James is a respected practitioner in the investment funds industry and is a regular speaker at industry events. · Investment Funds
Jo Powis
Jo Powis is part of the Walkers' Employment practice group based in Jersey and provides comprehensive advice across all areas of employment law, with particular expertise in whistleblowing and complex discrimination claims. Her experience includes: internal investigations grievance and disciplinary processes whistleblowing procedures and complaints discrimination claims managing poor performance and sickness absence terminations and settlement negotiations redundancies and restructures employment procedures and policies employment contracts drafting and enforcing post-termination restrictions employment aspects of acquisitions, disposals and outsourcings Jo regularly represents clients in complex Tribunal proceedings, including claims involving discrimination, unfair dismissal and whistleblowing. She also provides strategic counsel on large-scale projects, including restructures, policy review processes and corporate transactions. Jo also has in-house experience from 6 month secondments to the employment law teams at a major bank and a global telecommunications company. · Employment Law
John Crook
John Crook is a partner in our Insolvency, Restructuring & Dispute Resolution Group in Hong Kong. John practises Cayman Islands and BVI commercial litigation and all forms of dispute resolution. John also advises on insolvency and corporate restructuring matters. John has significant experience in shareholder / LP disputes and matters arising out of distressed investment vehicles, particularly hedge funds, from both fund and investor perspectives. He frequently advises on company law issues involving company restructures, corporate finance, unlawful dividend payments, directors’ and partners’ duties, and breach of trust situations. John works on matters before the Grand Court's specialist Financial Services Division, the Cayman Islands Court of Appeal and the Commercial Court in BVI. He has also been involved in cases which have reached the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. John also has significant experience of commercial and investor-state arbitration, including under the auspices of the ICC, LCIA, HKIAC and SIAC, as well as ad hoc arbitral proceedings under UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules. John advises on all matters relating to arbitration in the Cayman Islands and BVI, including validity of arbitration agreements, procedural issues, interim measures, and enforcement of foreign and domestic arbitral awards. John has a particular focus on questions of jurisdiction and other conflict of laws issues, as well as issues concerning the enforcement of foreign judgments and arbitral awards (including under the New York Convention), and issues involving state immunity. · Litigation
Kristen Kwok
Kristen Kwok is a Partner in our Finance team in Hong Kong. Kristen advises on all aspects of banking and finance with an emphasis on structured finance, debt capital markets and asset finance (in particular aircraft and ship finance). Kristen joined Walkers in 2006. She is fluent in English, Mandarin and Cantonese. · Banking and Finance
Paul Aherne
Paul has extensive experience of debt financing transactions in Asia acting for financial institutions, private equity sponsors, investors and corporates. He specialises in advising in relation to the Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands law aspects of fund finance, leveraged and acquisition finance, real estate finance, structured equity finance (including margin loans and equity derivatives), private credit, special situations and general secured and unsecured lending. · Fund Finance
Tom Pugh
Tom advises on Bermuda, British Virgin Islands and Cayman Islands law and he leads our Insolvency, Restructuring & Dispute Resolution Group in Asia. Tom focuses on advising insolvency practitioners, creditors, and debtors and shareholders in respect of cross-border insolvencies and restructurings as well as funds and financial institutions on investment disputes, with experience in consensual workouts; court-led restructurings and recovery processes; and enforcement / strategic investment advisory reviews. He frequently advises on corporate law and investment matters for a variety of stakeholders, including redemption issues, other exit options, directors' duties, protective steps, enforcement and remedies and strategies involving consensual and/or court-based approaches. Tom has worked on a variety of large-scale cross-border liquidations and restructurings such as Lehman Brothers and MF Global (acting for the liquidators in Hong Kong), Asia-related Chapter 11 cases such as Pacific Andes/China Fishery and TMT and advised the steering committee representing the interests of more than 30 bank lenders and credit support providers/ECAs in connection with Hong Kong-listed Genting's US$3.5bn debt restructuring, as well as cross-jurisdictional recognition cases such as Z-Obee, Changang and Huiyuan Juice involving interplay among the courts of Hong Kong and Bermuda/the Cayman Islands. Restructuring and liquidation work has involved advising on cross border asset recoveries and settlements, court processes to resolve key issues affecting liquidators’ ability to determine and distribute assets, matters arising in the administration of failed brokerages, and assignments involving China, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland and Japan. · Insolvency
Victoria Raymond
Victoria Raymond is a partner in our Insolvency & Dispute Resolution team in Hong Kong. Victoria is a leading practitioner in Hong Kong's legal landscape, known for providing clear, pragmatic, strategic and commercial advice to clients facing challenging situations. With a track record of successfully handling high-stakes disputes and insolvency matters, her reputation as a skilled and reliable professional is well-earned. Specialising in Cayman Islands, BVI and Bermuda commercial litigation, dispute resolution and insolvency, she advises clients in relation to commercial disputes, shareholder disputes, distressed investment vehicles, derivative actions, unfair prejudice claims, contentious valuation exercises, fund related matters, enforcement of rights, debt recovery, and contentious issues relating to digital assets. She also provides both contentious and non-contentious advice relating to company law and banking issues. Victoria has worked on matters before the Grand Court's Financial Services Division in the Cayman Islands, the Commercial Court in the BVI, the Supreme Court of Bermuda and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. · Litigation