Although tough market conditions have created a competitive environment, the major UK-based firms continue to dominate banking work in Asia. This year's nominated firms are Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Linklaters and Lovells.

Allen & Overy edged the judge's final vote in their favour at last year's event and were announced 'Banking Law Firm of the Year'.

Partner Joseph Tse said: "The UK firms dominate overall but there are some niche areas where local and US firms have a very strong practice."

He added: "Banking is a very general category. If you cast out project finance and insolvency what remains is property finance, acquisition finance, structured finance (like tax driven work and general syndicated facilities) and a host of other things. When you start to look at these areas, you find some strong local and US players."

Over the course of the last year, different firms have done well in different areas of banking. "A&O has achieved a record billing level for banking work in Hong Kong last year," said Tse. "This follows its deliberate strategy of trying to move up the value chain, to try and focus on the more structured and value-added transactions."

He added: "The general syndicated loan market was extremely competitive last year. A&O has, in some cases, consciously lost some plain vanilla deals because of pricing. It has decided not to play the game of low-balling."

Instead, A&O is doing a lot of tax-driven structured financing (which is less prone to low-balling) for HSBC and other financial institutions.

Said Tse: "Clients know that the top-tier firms are not the cheapest in town and are looking for technical ability and overall service quality."
Although these firms are subject to market forces, low-balling is not a game that they want to play, he added. "But there is still a lot of interesting, good work out there and it's a question of trying to identify those opportunities and position oneself properly to try and capture that work."