Minter Ellison has announced the appointment of Fred Kinmonth as a new partner of the firm and as head of the Corporate & Commercial team in the Hong Kong office.
Kinmonth is a former partner of Herbert Smith and of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and has more than 30 years’ experience – 15 of them in Hong Kong – as an M&A and capital markets specialist and as an investment banker.
Commenting on the appointment, Managing Partner in Hong Kong, Sam Farrands, said: “Getting Fred Kinmonth on board is a fantastic coup for the Hong Kong office. He is one of Asia’s leading corporate lawyers and transactional specialists. He strengthens our practice in this area and will spearhead the growth of Minter Ellison’s Corporate & Commercial practice into Asia.”
Kinmonth is well known and highly regarded in the region. He has acted for private equity investors and in relation to equity capital markets and M&A transactions for many years and was the managing director of Peregrine Capital Limited, the equity capital arm of the Peregrine financial services group, in the 1990s.
More recently, he advised the Hong Kong Government on all aspects of the establishment of Hong Kong Disney, including the corporate structure, shareholder, management, license, master project agreements and financing documents, and he was a key adviser to the Shanghai Government on the establishment of Shanghai Universal, a US$870+million theme park scheduled to open in Pudong in 2006.
Farrands points out that Kinmonth’s appointment continues the aggressive expansion of Minter Ellison in Asia. “Over the past couple of years, the Hong Kong office has tripled in size, attracting key lawyers and teams from CMS Cameron McKenna and Linklaters.”
The firm has also expanded its operations in Thailand, placed a senior partner on the ground in China, and positioned new personnel in Jakarta, in the offices of long-time associated firm, Makarim & Taira S, one of Indonesia’s leading commercial law firms
Farrands adds that he’s on the lookout for more top-notch lawyers. “We continue to be busy working on Dragages’ successful tender for the HK$2.3 billion exhibition centre at Chek Lap Kok airport, the US$13 billion Guangdong LNG supply deal and Manila’s new airport development, and we’ve just been appointed
