On April 2 2002, Norton Rose will reopen for business in Hong Kong almost three years to the day after it was forced out following the breakdown of its joint venture with local firm Johnson Stokes & Master.

Corporate lawyer David Stannard will head up the new office, returning to the firm after a stint at the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission. He will lead a team of 25 lawyers including Peter Haslam and Jim James, who both return from Singapore. They will resume business heading up the Banking and Litigation practices respectively and there are no immediate plans to replace them in Singapore.

Relocating from London is Giles Brand, who will head up the Asset Finance group, and corporate partners Glen Hall and Graeme Muir (Muir is returning from Nomura International).

Also joining the team is Hong Kong based technology, media and telecommunications lawyer Marcus Bass, another former Norton Rose lawyer who is returning after time in industry.

Paul Giles, the international managing partner of Asia for Norton Rose, rejects suggestions that his firm’s brand has suffered while absent from Hong Kong. He says. “We wish we hadn’t had to do it. We wish we could have come to some arrangement with JSM. But it was not possible at that time, so we had no alternative but to take the medicine and leave town for three years. I would rather have been there than not been there, but we are where we are.”

Giles says the Hong Kong office will focus on the firm’s traditionally strong practice areas – corporate finance, project finance, ships and aircraft, cross border work, and international litigation and arbitration. “It is not a cold start,” he says. “We are starting with people who have spent years in Hong Kong, know their way around Hong Kong, and obviously have good contacts.”

But if Norton Rose thinks it will be easy to simply pick up where they left off – think again, says Allen & Overy’s Hong Kong based regional managing partner Chris Roberts. “Clearly it will have an effect, and their business will not be the same as it was before they left.”

And JSM’s senior partner Simon Ip warns that the UK firm is facing a contracting legal market and stiffer competition. “With the economic downturn, there is less work and the market share is getting smaller and smaller,” he says.

Giles, meanwhile, issues a warning to JSM over its cosy relationship with HSBC. “We do work for Hong Kong Bank all around the world. It is a major client of the firm and quite naturally, we hope we’ll be able to develop that practice…further. We still have good friends at Hong Kong bank and I hope we will have an opportunity to represent them.”

HSBC declined to comment.

Many in the legal profession in Hong Kong are welcoming the return of an old adversary. The regional managing partner of one magic circle firm says: “I think they will do well. We welcome the competition and we wish them well.”

Even A&O’s Roberts concedes: “It is not as though they have disappeared from the region entirely or that they withdrew through choice.”