Till a few years ago, Paris-headquartered Gide Loyrette Nouel had a larger presence in Asia. Offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong covered the northern part of the continent, while twin offices in Vietnam’s Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City gave it a foothold in the ASEAN region.
Today, that presence stands somewhat reduced. The Hong Kong office was shuttered in June this year, with Gide moving the remainder of its staff there to local firm Howse Williams Bowers, with which it has established a best friends’ arrangement. There is no longer a Hanoi office, and Ho Chi Minh City is manned by a skeleton team.
Much of this has come down to a slowing market regionally, which required Gide to take stock of its options and recalibrate its approach, said partner David Boitout, a corporate and M&A specialist based in Paris.
That has included recognising that Gide has “always been stronger in North Asia/Greater China than in Southeast Asia,” according to Boitout, a result of European clients’ push towards China over the past 15 years as the market flourished.
Similarly, Gide realised that over the years, “the Hong Kong legal needs of our traditional clientele, i.e. European clients investing into China, were not sufficient to allow us to maintain a sizeable team in Hong Kong,” added Boitout.
PARTNER UP
As the legal market continues to be more challenging and competitive, some firms might pack up their business first and then just start over when conditions become more favourable. This might make sense in the short term, but as Boitout pointed out, re-opening a practice can result in “costly lateral hiring without guarantee with respect to the quality and sustainability of the team hired.”
In comparison, Gide prefers to reconfigure the size of its practice to suit the market while at the same time ensuring that it retains “good people that we have trained for many years and who are the key assets of the offices” – a strategy that it employed in China amid the economic slowdown.
As such, while the downsizing of the firm’s Hong Kong office might be viewed as a negative outcome by some, but Gide takes a different view. “The big lesson that we have learned from this move is that in some markets, we can be stronger with the right partner than alone,” said Boitout.
Partnerships have thus become an important part of Gide’s strategy. In Hong Kong, as part of the new arrangement with HWB, Gide set up a dedicated desk at that firm to service European clients. This offers HWB the opportunity to further develop its European clientele, and allows Gide to continue to boost its China practice, which remains “a key practice outside of France,” according to Boitout.
Similarly in Vietnam, Gide has developed an integrated platform with Indochina Legal, a law firm founded in 2007 by Eric Ledréau, a former Gide attorney. As that firm has lawyers in its Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi offices, as well as a network in the Indochina region, Gide can continue to offer clients access to the region without having to commit a great deal of personnel.
