King & Wood Mallesons has expanded its equity capital markets practice with hire of Sun Kai as a partner in Hong Kong from the Beijing office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

Sun becomes the second Skadden partner to leave its Beijing office since it closed its Shanghai office in October last year. Sun’s departure follows Xu Yilin, who joined Cooley in January.

With more than 15 years of experience in capital markets and mergers and acquisitions, Sun represents both issuers and underwriters in initial public offerings, follow-on equity offerings, and debt offerings.

"We are thrilled to welcome Kai Sun to the KWM Hong Kong partnership and to the Hong Kong office. Kai’s extensive capital markets expertise is a tremendous addition to the already deep bench that is KWM Hong Kong’s ECM team,” said Wang Junfeng, KWM global chairman, in a statement.

Added Hao Zhou and Hayden Flinn, co-chief executives of KWM Hong Kong: "We are delighted to have Kai join the KWM Hong Kong partnership. Kai’s appointment is a further development of KWM's growth strategy, and our key goal of supporting clients across the region and beyond."

According to Skadden's website, it currently has eight legal professionals in Beijing. Meanwhile, with Sun’s hire, KWM now has 66 professionals in Hong Kong.