Adelaide firm Fox Tucker Lawyers will look to capitalise on its Shanghai office as more state owned and private Chinese companies look to invest and raise capital abroad.

Fox Tucker Lawyers opened only 12 months ago, following the coming together of DLA Phillips Fox Adelaide and Rankine Tucker Lawyers. Since then it has added new partner and capital raising specialist Brendan Connell who launched the Shanghai office in 2007 while at another Adelaide firm, Tindall Gask Bentley.

The Shanghai office has doubled in size since joining Fox Tucker and Connell is looking to build it further as more Chinese companies look to invest in Australian mining projects. “I think that mining listings will continue to grow. If you get the right combination of Australian expertise and Chinese resources, or vice versa, it’s a plan that can work very well,” he added.  “One of the reasons I came to Fox Tucker is that it is a full commercial firm and offers significant opportunities to leverage off the IP and tax skills that my clients are looking for.”

Fox Tucker managing partner, Joe DeRuvo, told ALB that the addition of Connell and the Shanghai office was an important part of the firm’s future growth plans. “One of the opportunities that we saw moving forward was that we have a number of clients who either deal with or operate in China; we saw it as an opportunity for them to have a seamless link to China [through Connell],” he said. "We would like see Brendan’s area of the firm continuing to grow, ideally the Shanghai office grow from where it is and double in size."

The firm has also added banking and finance consultant Paul Bear from Kelly & Co (formerly at Minter Ellison). “They [Connell and Bear] have bought along with them a number of different areas of practice and clients we did not have before,” said DeRuvo. In the next 12 months DeRuvo would like to expand the firm’s Melbourne office, which was already established under the Rankine Tucker brand, but will only add to it if the opportunities are right. “We are not interested in growth for growth’s sake,” he said.

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