Andrew Hutton's departure to the Singapore office of O'Melveny & Myers constitutes the latest in a string of senior Paul Hastings defections. The firm has now lost four senior-level lawyers from its Asia practice over the past 12 months. Earlier this month, US securities expert Joe Sevack left the firm for Troutman Sanders, partners Maurice Hoo and Phoebus Chu both departed to Orrick, and Etsui Doi left to become co-head of Foley & Lardner's Tokyo office in June 2009.
Hutton, who was a counsel at Paul Hastings, will assume the same position at O'Melveny and will be initially placed in Hong Kong before relocating to Singapore in early June 2010. His practice encompasses acting for underwriters and corporate issuers in debt and equity offerings, including high-yield, convertible and straight corporate debt offerings, IPOs, secondary and follow-on equity offerings, and listings of ADRs and GDRs in SEC registered transactions, Rule 144A, and Regulation S offerings. In addition to his time with Paul Hastings, Hutton also had stints with Latham & Watkins and as general counsel of a NASDAQ-listed resort development company.
OMM has also appointed Kee Ming Chi as a counsel in its project development & real estate practice. Chi, who joins the firm after stints with Dewey & LeBoueuf and Herbert Smith, acts for both public- and private-sector organisations on a variety of matters in the projects space and will be based in OMM's Hong Kong office.
In the last year, Paul Hastings has also lost Alex Jampel to Baker & McKenzie; Maxwell Fox from Litigation to Ropes & Gray, Christian Peterson from Project Finance to MoFo, and David Vance and
Arata Nomoto from Corporate to City Yuwa.
Paul Hastings has offset the loss somewhat with a string of lateral hires including Sammy Li (from Morgan Stanley), Annie Wu (from Kirkland & Ellis), Roger Peng (from Hogan Lovells), Catherine Zhang (from Freshfields), Matthew Berger (from Morrison & Foerster) and counsel Chris Betts (from his position as General Counsel for Asia at McKinsey.
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