Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy has boosted its core capital markets practice with the lateral hire of White & Case US securities partner Joshua Zimmerman and the election to its partnership of Singapore-based capital markets lawyer Naomi Ishikawa.

Zimmerman, joining Milbank in Hong Kong, specialises in high-yield debt, sovereign bonds and IPOs, though his practice includes securitisations, M&A, tender and exchange offers, and investment banking compliance. His underwriter clients include ABN AMRO, Barclays Capital, Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch and UBS. 

Ishikawa focuses on cross-border securities offerings including equity offerings, privatisations, rights offerings, debt offerings and high-yield offerings for companies in the region. She worked on the recent US$1.2bn Reliance Petroleum Limited IPO. 

Milbank currently has 40 lawyers in Asia, nearly half of whom focus on capital markets. The practice is headed by Anthony Root, working out of Hong Kong and Beijing.