Speaker 1: The Australian Financial Review. When Australian law firm Mallison Stephen
Speaker 1: Shak merged with China's king and Wood in twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: it broke new ground.
Speaker 2: So Kate WM is the first international firm headquartered in Asia.
Speaker 2: So the future for US is aligned with very much
Speaker 2: the emergence of Asia, including China.
Speaker 1: Shi Jimping was just coming to power, and while the
Speaker 1: two countries' political and legal systems were vastly different, most lawyers,
Speaker 1: politicians and business people believe China would continue to open up.
Speaker 3: To the world.
Speaker 1: One person who was there right from the start was
Speaker 1: Chinese lawyer Rupert Lee. He was integral to the merging
Speaker 1: negotiations and would go on to become the firm's chief
Speaker 1: operating officer its third most senior executive. But late last year,
Speaker 1: Rupert Lee was out. His sudden departure led Financial Review
Speaker 1: journalist Max Shanahan to start digging around, and what he
Speaker 1: discovered among court files in Beijing, allegedly corrupt wind farm
Speaker 1: deals in Montenegro and a controversial legal conference in Russia,
Speaker 1: has raised serious questions about how Kingenwood Mallison's manages risk
Speaker 1: and conflicts across its jurisdictions.
Speaker 3: Kingwood Mallisons has no independent directors who might pull them
Speaker 3: up and say, you know, hold on what deals we
Speaker 3: being exposed to? Why is Rupert who's on our global
Speaker 3: board worrying eight million Hong Kong dollars from the firm?
Speaker 3: When's he going to pay it? Buck?
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Finn. I'm Lisa Murray. This week Max
Speaker 1: Shanahan on kwm's China experiment and whether it can last.
Speaker 1: It's Thursday, June nineteenth. Hi, Max, thanks for coming on
Speaker 1: the podcast, Lisa, thanks for having me. KM has been
Speaker 1: operating as a global law firm since twenty twelve. What
Speaker 1: made you decide to start looking into the merged firm
Speaker 1: and how it works now?
Speaker 3: Oh, well, I've always been interested in how the mergers worked.
Speaker 3: It's a merge between an Australian and a Chinese law firm.
Speaker 3: They're such radically different legal systems it must be really
Speaker 3: difficult to bridge those systems. How are they pulling it off?
Speaker 3: If they are pulling it off? And so the way
Speaker 3: this sort of all came about was I'd written a
Speaker 3: story about the global chief executive retiring Soe Kench and
Speaker 3: then I started to hear about this guy Rupert Lee,
Speaker 3: who was the global chief operating officer, heard that he
Speaker 3: was leaving as well, and I'd planned to write a
Speaker 3: story about it. But then last October one of the
Speaker 3: international legal trade publications reported that not only was he
Speaker 3: leaving the firm, Kingwood Mallison's was suing him for eight
Speaker 3: million Hong Kong dollars, and so that sort of set
Speaker 3: off all sorts of red flags.
Speaker 1: So he started looking into Rupert Lee.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it turned out that he got himself into
Speaker 3: quite a bit of legal and financial trouble. So obviously
Speaker 3: there was some sort of falling out, and katiewm had
Speaker 3: sued Rupert Lee for taking an eight million Hong Kong
Speaker 3: doll alone from the Hong Kong partnership. So it got
Speaker 3: to the points where we had to try and track
Speaker 3: him down. By this time he'd left the firm, he
Speaker 3: was sort of difficult to get in touch with. So
Speaker 3: we sent someone around to his place in Hong Kong,
Speaker 3: in quite a nice neighborhood on Hong Kong Islands, and
Speaker 3: we dropped a list of questions under his door. A
Speaker 3: few days went by and I managed to track down
Speaker 3: a phone number and I gave him a call and
Speaker 3: he said he'd received our questions and he was going
Speaker 3: to send me a response.
Speaker 1: So before we delve into Rupert Lee's financial and legal
Speaker 1: problems and how he responded to your questions, let's go
Speaker 1: right back to the start. Why did Mallisons and King
Speaker 1: and Would decide to merge in the first place.
Speaker 3: So Mallison's has always been one of the top firms
Speaker 3: in Australia. It was founded almost two hundred years ago.
Speaker 3: Two of the current High Court bench did time at Mallison's.
Speaker 3: There's sort of high profile business people and war directors
Speaker 3: like Nicola Wakefield Evans for example. They're sort of smattering
Speaker 3: of kind of conservative politicians that have come out of there.
Speaker 3: And so it's a place that if you go through
Speaker 3: law school and you get a clerk shup at Mallison's,
Speaker 3: you're sort of set up for a good career if
Speaker 3: you stay in the firm all through the connections you
Speaker 3: get you can go on to arrange different careers in
Speaker 3: the bar or in business. And so the context of
Speaker 3: the merger is about fifteen years ago a lot of
Speaker 3: Mallison's rivals in Australia were doing deals to tie up
Speaker 3: with UK firms to add some sort of global element
Speaker 3: to their business. So Free Hills, an Australian law firm,
Speaker 3: did a tie up with Herbert Smith Allen's, one of
Speaker 3: their big rivals with Link Leaders, a UK firm and
Speaker 3: Mallison's had tried the other few times but nothing really
Speaker 3: came to pass, so they started to talk to China.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm.
Speaker 5: Chinese President Hu Jintao arrived at the White House to
Speaker 5: an elaborate welcome ceremony. The two leaders spent most of
Speaker 5: their time talking about the economy, both repeatedly uttering the word.
Speaker 6: Of the day cooperation, cooperation.
Speaker 3: And at this time China's economy was really booming and
Speaker 3: it was the next big thing. Trade between Australia and
Speaker 3: China was really expanding at a rapid base.
Speaker 6: Well it was because of the continuing demand from China,
Speaker 6: largely that Australia's economy managed to fare better than most
Speaker 6: developed countries during last year's global financial crisis.
Speaker 3: It was opening up its economy and everyone thought this
Speaker 3: growth and liberalization would just continue as it was.
Speaker 7: The pilot Free Trade Zone allows foreign competitors' access to
Speaker 7: China's highly protected services sector. The government is promising to
Speaker 7: cut through the red tape for businesses opening here and
Speaker 7: give investors tax benefits.
Speaker 3: The merger was eventually done into the last few months
Speaker 3: of the Hugean Taoer era, and there was a new leader, Xijimping,
Speaker 3: who was meant to continue on this liberalization.
Speaker 4: However, it is widely hoped that his new government will
Speaker 4: take some drastically needed reforms in order to get the
Speaker 4: country's economy back on track and to fight the ever
Speaker 4: growing problem of corruption.
Speaker 1: I was actually in China at the time in twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: and I remember that period. I remember the merger and
Speaker 1: everyone being so excited about it, and I also remember
Speaker 1: writing stories about China at the time opening up not
Speaker 1: just economically but politically. Everyone expected political reforms from Sheeting Ping,
Speaker 1: So there was a lot of optimism at the time.
Speaker 3: And both firms saw a huge opportunity in this to
Speaker 3: capitalize on that sentiment, and so the dually ended up
Speaker 3: doing was with King and Wood, which is one of
Speaker 3: the top Chinese firms that was set up in the
Speaker 3: early nineties just as private law firms were first allowed
Speaker 3: in China, and from the start it wanted to really
Speaker 3: focus on doing international work and appealing to Western clients,
Speaker 3: so its name is a great example. There was no
Speaker 3: King no Wood. They were just emulating this ideal of
Speaker 3: what an imagined kind of authoritative and well connected Western
Speaker 3: law firm looks like. At the time they merged, there
Speaker 3: were sort of roughly the same size between one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty two hundred partners, and now the Chinese partnership
Speaker 3: is double the size of the Australian partnership. And there's
Speaker 3: this great scene in a book that was written about
Speaker 3: the history of Kingwood Mallson's where these three senior Australian
Speaker 3: partners get on a plane to Beijing and then they
Speaker 3: turn up in their shirt sleeves and it's freezing cold,
Speaker 3: and they make their way to the Kingwood offices in
Speaker 3: this big tall building in Beijing, and they greeted in
Speaker 3: this huge boardroom. There's only three of them, and on
Speaker 3: the other side there's eleven Chinese partners and this guy
Speaker 3: who was managing partner, as time Strooke Fuller, he leans
Speaker 3: across to his colleagues and he says, you know, I
Speaker 3: think we've undercooked this.
Speaker 1: But despite the Mallison's delegation being completely out numbered, the
Speaker 1: talks went well, the two firms did end up eventually merging.
Speaker 1: Tell us about the deal, how did it actually work.
Speaker 3: So the firm's structured as a Swiss Varian, which is
Speaker 3: this sort of structure that's not uncommon in these big
Speaker 3: international law firms, and it means that each member partnership
Speaker 3: in each country is financially separate, so things go badly
Speaker 3: in one part of the world, it doesn't bring the
Speaker 3: rest of the firm down with it. So what's different
Speaker 3: about Kingwood Mallison's is there's only three main partnerships as Australia,
Speaker 3: China and Hong Kong, so that's a bit unique. But
Speaker 3: despite that, it's intended to present to the world as
Speaker 3: a single firm. It's pitched to clients as I think
Speaker 3: the line that uses where the top tier international firm
Speaker 3: for Asia from Asia. So the merger presented heaps of
Speaker 3: opportunities for the firm, but the different Australian and Chinese
Speaker 3: attitudes in some cases to governance and risk also through
Speaker 3: up lots of challenges.
Speaker 8: What are some of the challenges you've confronted in putting together.
Speaker 5: Such established firms from such different settings.
Speaker 8: Yes, we don't have long enough for all of the challenges.
Speaker 8: It's a classic question.
Speaker 3: In an interview about a decade ago then global managing
Speaker 3: partners to it full set as much.
Speaker 8: Right from the start of Kingwood and Mallisons, this concept
Speaker 8: of merger of equals not a takeover of Australia of
Speaker 8: China or China of Australia. Everybody has an equal voice.
Speaker 3: But he stressed that the two firms still shared these
Speaker 3: common values and the relationship was developing with speed and
Speaker 3: everything was going to plan.
Speaker 8: I think every month and every year that goes by,
Speaker 8: people see the benefit of merging the firms.
Speaker 3: And so while this varian structure isolates risk, it also
Speaker 3: has the effect of clouding visibility over each of the
Speaker 3: partner firms, particularly in the Mallison's case, when you have
Speaker 3: clients with big data protection of concerns, they want to
Speaker 3: know that their data isn't going to be shared with
Speaker 3: the Chinese part of the firm, So you have to
Speaker 3: erect these walls within the firm, which sort of compounds
Speaker 3: the existing walls between the partnerships. So that makes things
Speaker 3: difficult to manage in some cases. So what it really
Speaker 3: means is that while each partnership leverages the brand the
Speaker 3: reputation and the international connections of KWM, in practice, little
Speaker 3: knowledge or transparency over what each part of the firm
Speaker 3: is working on. So I spoke to a bunch of
Speaker 3: former partners and staff at KWM, some of whom were
Speaker 3: really closely involved in the merger, some of whom were
Speaker 3: there until quite recently, and they all said that there
Speaker 3: was always an awareness that there were transparency issues in
Speaker 3: the partnership. One former partner said they caught it within
Speaker 3: the firm the Great Wall of China, which he took
Speaker 3: to me, and the gap between what you understand is
Speaker 3: happening and what is actually happening in the Chinese partnership.
Speaker 3: Another gave me an example. They were working with a
Speaker 3: major bank kill as a client and they had operations
Speaker 3: in Australia, Hong Kong and China, but they just couldn't
Speaker 3: find out which partner in the Chinese firm the client
Speaker 3: was using, so in the end they had to go
Speaker 3: and ask the client directly. So I was clearly problems
Speaker 3: with communication between the international elements and yeah, because of
Speaker 3: all these cybersecurity concerns that clients had, there were big
Speaker 3: internal boundaries erected between the partnerships. They were on completely
Speaker 3: different document sharing systems. Even simple inform was difficult to
Speaker 3: obtain and it really was an environment that was conducive
Speaker 3: to any sort of corporation or collaboration and rupe.
Speaker 1: At least job as chief operating officer was to oversee
Speaker 1: that cooperation between the Australian and Chinese lawyers. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like there was much going on. Max. When
Speaker 1: did Lee's problems become a problem for KWM.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it turns out that while he was global
Speaker 3: Chief operating Officer of the firm, which is quite a
Speaker 3: big job, he was also had this whole range of
Speaker 3: private business interests on the side, probably the most colorful
Speaker 3: of which is this payments company, which got caught up
Speaker 3: in China's gambling crackdown in twenty twenty one. One of
Speaker 3: its employees was convicted for facilitating payments for an illegal
Speaker 3: aligning casino run by Sun City Group, which is quite
Speaker 3: well known in Australia for its junkets operation, which came
Speaker 3: up in inquiries into Crown and Star casinos. He was
Speaker 3: alleged to have been part of a group that helped
Speaker 3: channel funds to the chair of relisted company the chair
Speaker 3: was also his business partner in a separate business. In
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, he gets this huge three hundred and
Speaker 3: seventy million Hong Kong dollar money lenders claim from this mysterious,
Speaker 3: small little lender in Kowloon. He says, nothing to worry
Speaker 3: about there. Even if that is the case, it's sort
Speaker 3: of a unusual thing for a global law firm executive
Speaker 3: to be caught up in. And then in February last year,
Speaker 3: he gets this bankruptcy petitioned from a financial firm in
Speaker 3: Hong Kong, and Rupert says Katoem actually helped him out
Speaker 3: here and they even opened a file for him, helped him.
Speaker 3: He says, security settlement in this bankruptcy claim. Kingwood Mouson's
Speaker 3: Australia completely denies that, which is a bit unusual. And
Speaker 3: the other unusual thing is that there's this just lack
Speaker 3: of agreement between Rupert and KWM about how he actually
Speaker 3: came to leave the firm. So KWM Australia says that
Speaker 3: KWM China asked him to resign halfway through last year
Speaker 3: because of I presume all these financial business issues which
Speaker 3: are really piling up on top of each other Ruperts
Speaker 3: said that he actually left of his own cord and
Speaker 3: that he was retained as a business consultant at the
Speaker 3: firm until the end of last year, so there's a
Speaker 3: bit of discordance between those two explanations. Naturally, all of
Speaker 3: this made me want to look further into what he
Speaker 3: was doing while I was still working for KIM, and
Speaker 3: I discovered that in twenty seventeen he became the director
Speaker 3: of this big state owned electricity company that was also
Speaker 3: quite a major client to Kingwood Mouson's and about a
Speaker 3: year before Lee joined the board of that firm, it
Speaker 3: had brought into a wind farm project in Montenegro that
Speaker 3: is now the subject of corruption investigations in three separate countries.
Speaker 1: Max, we're talking about King and Wood Mallison's, the first
Speaker 1: ever Sino Australian law firm, which has been operating for
Speaker 1: over a decade now. Your investigation has uncovered some real
Speaker 1: governance challenges for the firm and these were highlighted in
Speaker 1: a wind farm deal which its lawyers advised on in Montenegro.
Speaker 1: As you said, the deal is now the subject of
Speaker 1: corruption investigations in three separate countries. Tell us about the
Speaker 1: deal and how KWM was involved.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Kingwood Mallisons provided legal advice over the course
Speaker 3: of about three years for this wind farm project in Montenegro.
Speaker 3: It was a product of China's Belton Road initiative, which
Speaker 3: was the signature foreign policy of jijimping. It provided huge
Speaker 3: opportunities for legal work. So one of these projects took
Speaker 3: KWM to Malta, which is a small island in the Mediterranean.
Speaker 3: It's a European Union member country and it sort of
Speaker 3: tried to leverage that to make its way in the world,
Speaker 3: tried to attract a lot of foreign investments through becoming
Speaker 3: a haven for offshore companies. Now rupidly had become a
Speaker 3: non executive director of this state owned company called shang
Speaker 3: Hi Electric Power in May twenty seventeen. It was a
Speaker 3: longtime client of Kingwood Mallison's and his appointment came in
Speaker 3: the same month that he was appointed as its global
Speaker 3: chief operating Officer. So Shanghi Electric was involved in a
Speaker 3: range of deals in Southern Europe, including buying a third
Speaker 3: of Malta's state owned energy company and a Malta which
Speaker 3: was in a heap of debt at this point, and
Speaker 3: so in twenty sixteen, which is about a year before
Speaker 3: Lee joins the board. Shanghai Electric brought the rights to
Speaker 3: build this wind farm in Montenegro, which was done as
Speaker 3: a partnership with an A Malta. The law firm was
Speaker 3: responsible for completing due diligence on the project. But the
Speaker 3: real problem with the deal was the price that Shanghai
Speaker 3: Electric paid for the wind farm. It forked out more
Speaker 3: than three times of value that the wind farm had
Speaker 3: garnered just a couple of months previously. And Kingwood Mallinson's
Speaker 3: was the law firm responsible for drafting the contracts which
Speaker 3: enabled that deal to go through. And there's never any
Speaker 3: explanation about why that markup is paid. So Rupert Lee
Speaker 3: is not alleged to have broken any rules, ought to
Speaker 3: have been aware that the propriety of the deal had
Speaker 3: been caught into question. He only became a director after
Speaker 3: the price markup was paid, and he told me he
Speaker 3: was unaware that cato IM had even acted on the deal.
Speaker 1: So max, are the investigations chiefly about that markup in price?
Speaker 3: Yes, So there's three governments investigating the deal to try
Speaker 3: and find out why the Montenegro and the Maltese and
Speaker 3: the Spanish governments are all in on it, and Europoles
Speaker 3: involved as well. The allegations are that the price was
Speaker 3: inflated and some of the money eventually found its way
Speaker 3: to offshore accounts held by senior Maltese politicians, and it
Speaker 3: was also controversial because of the involvement of this Maltese
Speaker 3: casino entrepreneur and property developer named Jorgen Fenick. Jorgen Fennick
Speaker 3: has been accused of all austrating the car bombing murder
Speaker 3: of an investigative journalist who was looking into the Missouri
Speaker 3: wind farm deal.
Speaker 2: Carojuana Galitzia was the country's best known investigative journalist. She
Speaker 2: was killed on Monday in this car minutes after she
Speaker 2: left her home in Malta.
Speaker 3: And another equally suspected deal involving the same characters.
Speaker 9: Galizia ran a popular blog in which she highlighted the
Speaker 9: cases of suspected corruption in Malta. Once described as a
Speaker 9: one woman WikiLeaks, she famously led the Panama Paper's investigation
Speaker 9: into corruption in Malta.
Speaker 3: And almost five million euros from the markup made its
Speaker 3: way to companies controlled by Fenik, so Jorgan Fenik was
Speaker 3: arrested on these charges related to the car bombing. In
Speaker 3: late twenty nineteen.
Speaker 4: Police have now arrested one of the country's most prominent
Speaker 4: businessmen in connection to the case.
Speaker 8: Organ Fenek, was detained by armed officers after his yachts
Speaker 8: was intercepted. As Walter's handling of the case has drawn
Speaker 8: international criticism.
Speaker 3: He was released on bail in January this year and
Speaker 3: there's still no trial dates. Kingwood Mausons isn't alleged to
Speaker 3: have broken any rules or to have been aware of
Speaker 3: the potential corruption, and a lot of it happens downstream
Speaker 3: from its involvement, but I think it is something you'd
Speaker 3: probably ask questions about you. Why are we writing in
Speaker 3: this massive markup to this company no one's ever heard of?
Speaker 3: But Kingwood Mallsons extends its relationship with Shanghai Electric and
Speaker 3: the Montenegro Deal, continuing to act as its legal advisor,
Speaker 3: and in twenty eighteen it secures the financing for the
Speaker 3: project to enable it to actually be constructed and go ahead.
Speaker 1: You also came across another example that exposed the different
Speaker 1: approaches of the Australian and Chinese partnerships. How did a
Speaker 1: KWM lawyer end up as a speaker at a contentious
Speaker 1: legal conference in Saint Petersburg the year after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Speaker 3: So the senior kater and partner Tian Wenjing, who also
Speaker 3: worked on the Montenegro wind farm deal. In May twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three, she turns up at this big Saint Petersburg
Speaker 3: legal conference, which is organized by the Russian Ministry of Justice.
Speaker 3: So this wasn't just your run of the mill legal conference.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of boring panels about legal professional things,
Speaker 3: but the sort of keynote speakers at this event were
Speaker 3: the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the Russian former
Speaker 3: president dmitriy Medvedev. There were political panels, including one which
Speaker 3: is called the Russophobia twenty first century Nazism. Most gollingly,
Speaker 3: probably there was a panel which promoted the forced relocation
Speaker 3: of Ukrainian orphans into Russia. This is the subject of
Speaker 3: an international Criminal Court arrest warrant. That panel was headed
Speaker 3: by two Russian cabinet ministers. Tian Wenjing she appeared on
Speaker 3: two panels.
Speaker 2: It is my honor to talk about Chinese approach from
Speaker 2: a perspective of chalish.
Speaker 3: Lawyer alongside representatives of these major Russian state owners enterprises.
Speaker 6: I never could expect to witness such changes that were
Speaker 6: observing currently.
Speaker 3: One of which was the United Shipbuilding Corporation, whose representative
Speaker 3: was actually leading the panel.
Speaker 6: I'm very optimistic about the current situation Russia in now
Speaker 6: is it undergoing the period of changes.
Speaker 3: This is the company which builds the majority of Russia's
Speaker 3: naval fleet and it's sanctioned by the Australian government. Spoke
Speaker 3: about opportunities arising from other global law firms exits from
Speaker 3: Russia and the growing market for Russian companies to arbitrate
Speaker 3: disputes in Hong Kong and China. The program for one
Speaker 3: of her panels referred to unfriendly countries such as Australia,
Speaker 3: which were continuing to strengthen their sanctions policies against Russia
Speaker 3: and Belarus. And a result of all the Western sanctions
Speaker 3: on Russia, which has isolated from the global financial system
Speaker 3: and then forced big Western companies to pull out of
Speaker 3: the country. That's opened up a lot of opportunities for
Speaker 3: Chinese companies, and it's natural that Chinese lawyers would follow
Speaker 3: that business. It's quite a lucrative source of business. But
Speaker 3: this kind of shows the intensions at the heart of
Speaker 3: this Kingwood Malson's relationship. On its Australian website, the firm
Speaker 3: is advising clients on how to comply with Western sanctions
Speaker 3: on Russia, including on its energy sector. On its Chinese website,
Speaker 3: Tian co author and article with this chief executive of
Speaker 3: a Russian energy plant company on how to actually invest
Speaker 3: in the Russian energy sector, and this guy has eventually
Speaker 3: a couple of months later a sanctioned.
Speaker 1: The very different approaches.
Speaker 3: Yeah, kind of acting at cross purposes and pulling in
Speaker 3: very different directions.
Speaker 1: So then a final question Max, can KWM continue as
Speaker 1: a Sino Australian firm or do these different approaches to
Speaker 1: governance and risk management start to affect its brand and
Speaker 1: reputation so much that it could force a rethink on
Speaker 1: the merger.
Speaker 3: So this whole merger was based on on a bit
Speaker 3: of a punt, which is a rare thing for law firms,
Speaker 3: that China's growth was going to continue as it was,
Speaker 3: It's economy and politics was going to continue to liberalize,
Speaker 3: but none of that came to pass. So the original
Speaker 3: sort of thesis for the merger isn't there anymore. But
Speaker 3: even if the Australian Partnership wanted to leave the firm,
Speaker 3: there are a few things holding it back. So the
Speaker 3: Hong Kong Partnership, which was the only actual combination between
Speaker 3: Australian and Chinese lawyers, has become a really profitable part
Speaker 3: of the firm. And probably the most inconvenient thing is
Speaker 3: that there's a sort of penalty clause in the merger agreement.
Speaker 3: So if the Australian Partnership were to pull out, then
Speaker 3: it would have to give up the Hong Kong Partnership,
Speaker 3: which is probably something it doesn't want to do. So
Speaker 3: all of this, I think kind of shines a light
Speaker 3: on law firm governance, which probably isn't the most exciting topic,
Speaker 3: but when you consider it in light of what's happened
Speaker 3: to the big accounting and consulting firms who have the
Speaker 3: same private partnership structure, law firms have really got out
Speaker 3: of this whole post PEC tax leaks upheaval unscathed. Kingod
Speaker 3: Mallison's has no independent directors who might pull them up
Speaker 3: and say, you know, hold on what deals were being
Speaker 3: exposed to. Why is Rupert who's on our global board
Speaker 3: borrowing eight million Hong Kong dollars from the firm, when's
Speaker 3: he going to pay it back? And also they don't
Speaker 3: publish accounts. There's no sort of transparency. Despite being a
Speaker 3: global organization, as they say, having almost two hundred partners
Speaker 3: in Australia, they'd be bringing in hundreds of millions of
Speaker 3: dollars in revenue. But the end of the day, it's
Speaker 3: kind of a branding issue, all right. They advertise themselves
Speaker 3: as this single global law firm will connect you with Asia,
Speaker 3: where the law firm for Asia for the Asian century.
Speaker 3: But also we have no idea what's going on in
Speaker 3: our Chinese partnership, and the firm can't even speak as
Speaker 3: one entity. I mean, when the going is good, it's
Speaker 3: Kingwood Mallisons, the global law firm. But when you start
Speaker 3: to ask questions, it's where Kingwood Mallison's Australia, Kingwood Mallisons
Speaker 3: Hong Kong and Kingwood Mallison's China. So I think that's
Speaker 3: something that it has to deal with.
Speaker 1: Thanks Max, Thanks Lissen, Thank you for listening to The finn.
Speaker 1: I'm Lisa Murray with Financial Review reporter Maxim Shanahan joining
Speaker 1: the podcast today. The Finn is produced by Alex Gau
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