Withers Worldwide

Our Hong Kong Team - January 2008 

Withers' Hong Kong office is further evidence of the firm's commitment to international expansion and reflects both the growth of its Asia client base and the strength of the Asian economy. The experienced team will focus on servicing the complex - and burgeoning - cross-border legal and wealth planning needs of entrepreneurs, families, businesses and their advisers throughout the region.

The Hong Kong office, based in Gloucester Tower, The Landmark, Central, is a foreign law firm spearheaded by UK tax and family office practitioner, Samantha Bradley who is the Office Managing Director, and US tax practitioner, Kurt Rademacher - both are transferring from the firm's London office. They will be joined by Mary Ellen (Mimi) Hutton, who joins from Bryan Cave's Hong Kong office. Mimi will work alongside Kurt Rademacher to provide US tax advice.

From the outset, Withers will offer integrated international advice, providing a comprehensive range of US and English tax, international trust and commercial solutions. Hong Kong tax and commercial advice will also be available from April through an associated firm headed by Guy Facey.

Guy, a corporate lawyer joins from London based KSB Law LLP where he was head of the Commercial and International Group. He will focus on cross border corporate finance, particularly in the aerospace and automotive sectors. In addition to speaking Mandarin, Guy is also fluent in Italian and French. He brings to the team many years' experience in advising Chinese and Italian companies and is qualified to practice both Hong Kong and English law

Other areas of advice will cover succession and estate planning, inbound and outbound investment, capital raising, funds creation, family office structuring, philanthropy and art law. As a number of the team are fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin, we are able to advise in a variety of languages.

The firm is adding a number of other senior lateral hires, all of them very experienced: 

• Francis Lee joins from Walbrook Trustees in Hong Kong. He is a chartered accountant with over twenty years' experience in the region, having worked in a range of financial and management roles in leading financial and professional services firms. He joins as Executive Director (Asia). Francis is fluent in English, Cantonese and Mandarin.

The team will also be supported in Hong Kong by:

• Silvia On, a specialist in family offices and international structuring who joins from the Hong Kong office of PricewaterhouseCoopers Ltd where she was a senior consultant in the Personal Financial Services team. Silvia is fluent in English, Cantonese, Mandarin and Shanghainese.
• Nisha Chadha, a wealth planning solicitor qualified in England & Wales transfers from the firm's London office. Nisha has experience on advising families in Asia on the creation of family offices and advising Asian families on cross border tax planning and estate planning. Nisha is fluent in English, Hindi and Punjabi.