Like the apocryphal generals, we in the media frequently prepare to fight the last war. Such is the case with our interest in international law firm mergers. Let one Rust Belt Gargantua join up with an obscure City of London firm that boasts outposts across exotic lower Freedonia, and we will be happy for months. We need to start looking in the other direction. A quick trip to Hong Kong this winter convinced me that a chunk of the future belongs to the trans-Pacific play. Those who want to really rearrange the landscape will seek out a union with a Chinese firm. The reason: to become the leading international firm in China. Interested yet?
There are three reasons why foreign firms have invested in the People’s Republic and Hong Kong: to fill a vacuum; to follow their clients; and to gamely try to leverage their contacts into connections with PRC investors and state enterprises that need help abroad. (And for the Brits, to take advantage of their imperial first-mover advantage.) This all made complete sense in the short term, though for many firms the best they could manage was to leak money rather than merely hemorrhage it.
