Just as Freshfields announced the firm had finally wound up its Singapore office to concentrate on the China market, the head of Freshfields' China practice, Doug Markel, has left to head up the newly minted Beijing office of US competitor Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.
 
Markel is the second China practice head to depart Freshfields in a little over a year, with Michael Moser having left for O'Melveny & Myers in early 2006. The firm also lost previous long-time China practice head Thomas Jones to Allen & Overy last year, when he was heading up the firm's anti-trust, trade and competition practice. At the time, then China head Markel told ALB that Jones was not a core loss to Freshfields, as the firm had decided to focus on the high-end corporate work of its clients, and that all the key lawyers that had been essential to the firm's innovative deals were still in place.
 
With corporate and M&A-focused Markel now on board at Simpson Thacher, the firm's office will concentrate on M&A, private equity and capital markets transactions for Chinese companies, and for international companies and financial investors with an interest in China.
 
Simpson Thacher senior partner Chris Lin will be a resident partner in Beijing, with Markel to take over management when he moves across. The firm's China group includes capital markets lawyer Leiming Chen, and M&A counsel Shaolin Luo in Beijing.
 
Some consolation for Freshfields is the firm's movement of its Singapore partners - Yeelong Tan and Bruce Cooper - to Hong Kong, and its recent closure of the year's most significant Asian transactions: acting for CITIC Bank on its dual A and H share listing, the world's largest IPO this year to date at $5.4bn, and for the managers in connection with the largest convertible bond issue in Asia (ex-Japan) in the last six years for China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec).