Bangkok, Thailand. Photo: Shutterstock
The Japanese firm Mori Hamada & Matsumoto has recruited a longtime former Allen & Overy Bangkok partner.
Corporate lawyer Arkrapol Pichedvanichok, who was until 2015 a partner with Allen & Overy, will start at the firm's Thailand arm Chandler MHM Ltd. in January 2019 and co-lead the office's mergers and acquisitions practice with partner Ratana Poonsombudlert. Pichedvanichok is the second ex-Magic Circle partner to join Chandler MHM in recent years following former Clifford Chance finance partner Joseph Tisuthiwongse's move earlier this year.
A qualified Thai lawyer, Pichedvanichok has advised cross-border M&As and joint ventures involving Thai companies. In 2011, he advised Thai energy company Banpu Public Co. Ltd. on an acquisition of Mongolian miner Hunnu Coal Ltd. He had also represented state-owned Thai energy giant PTT Public Co. Ltd. and its subsidiaries on M&A and capital markets transactions.
He joined Allen & Overy in 1998 and had been a partner since 2001.
Tokyo-based Mori Hamada is one of the largest law firms in Japan with 482 lawyers in 2017, up 27 percent from a year earlier. Early last year, it merged with Bangkok-based Chandler & Thong-ek Law Offices and Chandler MHM now has close to 70 lawyers in the office.
Allen & Overy's Bangkok office has two partners, including office managing partner Stephen Jaggs. In 2014, the firm relocated longtime Bangkok partner and then-Southeast Asia chair Simon Makinson to Yangon but Makinson has recently moved to Hong Kong. Former Bangkok-based restructuring and litigation partner Dumnern Subpaisarn has also left the firm.
*Updated 10/24: This story has been updated with the fact that Pichedvanichok has not been a partner with Allen & Overy since 2015.
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