Conyers Dill & Pearman Sweep Up Asian Legal Awards

for LawAndTax-News.com, Hong Kong

06 October 2005

At a recent awards ceremony in Hong Kong, international offshore law firm Conyers Dill &Pearman collected several awards; they are currently celebrating their 20th anniversary in Hong Kong.

CD&P were awarded the trophy for Offshore Law Firm of the year, beating out opposition that included Harneys, Maples and Calder and Walkers. Organised by Asian Legal Business magazine, the Awards saw a record attendance of almost 500 private practitioners and corporate counsel cram into the glittering ballroom at the Conrad Hotel for Hong Kong's premier legal event.

With some 38 categories to get through, including seven industry in-house awards and eight core categories from the inaugural ALB Deals of the Year Awards Asia-Pacific SuperDeals 2005, proceedings got underway before the entrées had had time to cool.

This year, to further augment the ceremony, ALB also included The ALB Deals of the Year Awards Asia-Pacific SuperDeals 2005. This was described as the exciting culmination of ALB's review of the most significant, innovative and complex legal work across the Asia-Pacific region in 2004. Conyers Dill & Pearman collected on their contribution to the China M&A SuperDeal of the Year. The winning deal was the Anheuser Busch hostile takeover of Harbin Breweries. This deal, one of forty six different deals nominated across six categories spanning all of South East Asia and Australasia, beat out all the rest to also be awarded the overall SuperDeal of the Year. The other firms involved included Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer; Herbert Smith; Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison; Richards Butler, Conyers Dill & Pearman, Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, and Maples and Calder.

The award may have been a surprise, says the firm, to those unfamiliar with CD&P. However, the solid reputation the firm enjoys is reflected in the figures…. In 2004, Conyers Dill & Pearman acted on behalf of thirty-eight of the seventy IPO’s (Initial Public Offerings) listed on the HKSE (Hong Kong Stock Exchange) and that Conyers Dill & Pearman also acted on seventy-nine percent of the Cayman and Bermuda-based companies that listed on the HKSE during that same year.

During the first half of 2005 the firm has acted on sixty-three percent of the IPO’s on the HKSE, and seventy-nine percent of the Cayman and Bermuda-based companies that have listed on the HKSE so far this year.

“(People) really shouldn’t be surprised,” says CD&P Hong Kong based Partner Christopher Bickley. “Anyone who is aware of what’s going on in this market knows that we’re a solid law firm. Time and time again we prove that where it counts – getting the work done behind the desk.”

Conyers Dill & Pearman is also the only offshore firm to even appear in the Asian Legal Business top 10 rankings for Singapore’s main board stock exchange IPO’s, coming in 4th for listings based on value, acting on approximately US$460m (four-hundred and sixty million US dollars) worth of business during the period of June 2004 to June 2005. ALB also ranked CD&P 3rd when considering the number of IPO’s advised on – with 10 attributed to the firm during that same period.

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