About

After spending time as an associate at London-based Watson, Farley & Williams, Fiona Callanan-Thorsby took the opportunity to move to Hong Kong as an associate with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in 2007. She has been based in Asia Pacific ever since, though from 2009-2014 she moved to Singapore where she held in-house roles with CSR and then Barclays. Both of these roles were notable, the former for the fact that it was a more business-focused consultancy role, and the latter because in the four years she spent at Barclays she was able to hone her skills as a litigation specialist in cross-border disputes throughout the Asia-Pacific region. This expertise allowed her to move into her current role as assistant general counsel and head of litigation for Asia Pacific at Bank of America, a position she has held since 2014. Based in Hong Kong, Callanan-Thorsby has overall responsibility for litigation matters and other disputes throughout Asia, also being the final point of contact for regulatory enquiries. While the Asian arm of Bank of America has not been as active in terms of their disputes as the American arm, which has had a particularly busy period of litigation over the past year, given the size and complexity of the region this translates to a very high workload for Callanan-Thorsby to deal with. Given this, it is even more exceptional that she engages in a large amount of extra-curricular activity both in and outside of work. She is head of Bank of America’s disability advocacy network, and she also engages in a high volume of charity work, raising money and awareness in the process.