Singapore law firm Shook Lin & Bok has upped its corporate real estate capabilities with the addition of a team of lawyers from Withers KhattarWong.

The team is led by partners Kenneth Szeto (L), who led the real estate and finance practice at WKW, and John Tan, who was a senior associate there. They had joined WKW in 2017 from another Singapore firm, Colin Ng & Partners.

Szeto has experience in the real estate alternates sector, including co-working and co-living spaces, as well as self-storage facility assets. He also specialises in secured real estate financing, acting on both the lender and the borrower side. He advises private clients on their real estate investment portfolios and long-term asset-holding strategies.

Tan has more than a decade of experience in real estate and financing transactions and private client work, with particular expertise in industrial and heritage properties as well as niche sub-sectors, including co-living, co-working, high-tech agricultural, hospitality, manufacturing, medical, aviation, and self-storage assets.

“The strategic hire of this team is one of the few major real estate practice team moves in recent years in the Singapore market and signals SLB’s ambition to grow its market-leading corporate real estate practice while expanding its private client practice capabilities,” Shook Lin & Bok said in a statement.

Earlier this year, both DLA Piper and RHTLaw Asia added real estate partners in Singapore.

The arrivals of Szeto and Tan take the number of partners at Shook Lin to 63.