De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek has shuttered its Shanghai office, ending the Dutch firm’s 16-year presence in China.
The firm first entered China in 2010 with the opening of a Beijing office. It later launched a second office in Shanghai in 2014 before later closing Beijing to consolidate its China operations in Shanghai.
A De Brauw spokesperson said: ‘Our local operations have been scaled down over the past months as part of a strategic review. We however continue to be committed to the China market and to support clients there, as we do in the rest of Asia.’
De Brauw had a team of around seven lawyers in Shanghai, LB understands, alongside enforcement and investigations partner Roan Lamp, who divided his time between Amsterdam and Shanghai before the firm wound down operations. Of those lawyers, three have moved to other firms and two have relocated to De Brauw’s Amsterdam office.
De Brauw is part of Slaughter and May’s best friends network, which also includes Italy’s BonelliErede, Germany’s Hengeler Mueller, France’s Bredin Prat and Iberian leader Uria Menendez. Hengeler opened a Shanghai office in 2014 before closing it around five years later.
China has seen a steady stream of international law firms either scale back or withdraw from the market entirely in recent years, with with Latham & Watkins, Paul Weiss, Skadden, Weil, and Proskauer among those to have closed offices in the country over the past three years.
However, firms including Simmons & Simmons, HFW and CMS have bucked the trend, increasing their China operations.
One partner at a firm that withdrew from China last year told LB: ‘It was never easy to operate in the People’s Republic of China. There is significant bureaucracy, a lack of transparency, and local bar associations always taking potshots at you. With heightened trade tensions, those challenges have only become worse.’
