The Legal 500

Within Corporate (including M&A), tier 6

Bird & Bird’s natural focus is on the TMT sector. It recently acted for Sonepar Asia on its joint venture in Thailand with Polytechnology. Matthew Wong heads the department.

Within Dispute resolution Other recommended firms

Within Intellectual property, Bird & Bird is a first tier firm,

‘The cream of the crop in the IP field’, Bird & Bird is ‘highly responsive, commercially attuned and demonstrates market leadership in its quality of advice’. Hong Kong and China managing partner Matthew Laight leads the IP team, which handles contentious, non-contentious and regulatory mandates. Recently it advised TVB and TVB Pay Vision on three copyright tribunal cases relating to royalty disputes with the 4 major music publishers (Sony BMG, Warner Bros, Universal Music and EMI) and the Hong Kong Recording Industry Alliance. Clients single out Ai-Leen Lim, who delivers a ‘high level of professionalism’ and has a ‘deep understanding of her clients’ needs’.

Within TMT, Bird & Bird is a first tier firm,

‘Probably the best firm for TMT’, Bird & Bird fields specialists in the technology and communications sectors, who ‘always mobilise adequate resources to assist during a crisis’. In 2010, the team acted for Octopus in a headline data-protection case and now continues to advise the leading smart card payment system on the restructuring of its internal policies and procedures and the implementation of the recommendations set out by the various reports into the incident. Practice head Marcus Vass ‘does a very good job; he understands clients’ needs and is extremely competent, even when under time pressure’.