Shanghai:Chinese firm Global Law Office has agreed to merge with a Shanghai-based trade and customs boutique amid a continuing escalation of a brewing trade war between the U.S. and China.
On Sept. 1, HaoLiWen Partners will merge with the Global Law Office. The Shanghai shop, which also has offices in Beijing and Dublin, was founded in 2003. A full-service firm, HaoLiWen is best known for its foreign investment and trade practices.
Four partners from HaoLiWen will join the Global Law Office: Zhao Deming, Zhou Hemin and Hu Xiaoyu in Shanghai and Wang Yizhi in Beijing. Zhao, a former managing partner of HaoLiWen, advises on corporate matters and customs investigations. He previously practiced with Paul Hastings in Hong Kong and Shanghai.
Zhou, a former Chinese customs officer, also advises on import and export-related matters. Wang, who previously practiced with Reed Smith and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe in Beijing, counsels clients on corporate and employment matters.
HaoLiWen’s Dublin office now has one partner, corporate and intellectual property expert Shelly Xiong. Liu Jinrong, managing partner of the Global Law Office, said the firm currently has no plans to include the Dublin office in the combination.
Beijing-based Global Law Office was first founded in 1984 by the government agency China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) as one of the earliest law firms in China. The firm has since become independent from the Chinese government and is now one of the few large Chinese firms that have refrained from expanding overseas. Global Law Office has only mainland China offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
Global Law Office reported $57.5 million in gross revenue and 369 lawyers in 2016, according to The Asian Lawyer’s most recent China 40 report.
The acquisition of HaoLiWen will give the 100-partner Global Law Office a new customs capability to its existing trade and compliance practice. The firm said it will continue to operate a HaoLiWen customs tariff classification service center as an internal department.
“We believe the merger can be seen as an injection of the first-tier customs and trade compliance practice into a first-tier law firm,” said Zhao in a statement.
The acquisition comes at a time when a trade war between the U.S. and China has ramped up with a new round of tariffs announced Thursday on $16 billion worth of each country’s goods. The world’s two largest economies are now taxing $50 billion worth of goods on each other.
“It’s a good coincidence,” said Global Law Office’s Liu about the timing of the merger and new tariff announcement.
Both firms had began merger talks two years earlier. The uncertainty surrounding ongoing U.S.-China trade tensions has led to more advisory work for trade and customs lawyers.
Liu said Global Law Office is currently representing CCPIT on U.S. trade-related disputes and expects more U.S. trade compliance work in the future. Other firms in China and Hong Kong have recently made similar moves as the trade dispute intensifies between the U.S. and China.
Last month, China’s Beijing DHH Law Firm launched a second U.S. office to support small- and medium-sized Chinese businesses in the country. In June, global accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers’ affiliate firm in Hong Kong recruited William Marshall, the former head of Baker McKenzie’s China trade and supply chain practice group.
