Seattle, United States
Davis Wright Tremaine LLP (DWT), a large international law firm, today announced a new venture to advise companies that invest and operate in the Pacific. The venture, named DWT Pacific, offers the only unified, trans-Pacific legal and business advisory team in the market.
David Cohen, former head of the U.S. Department of the Interior's Office of Insular Affairs, joined DWT in February and will head the team, along with DWT senior partner Craig Miller and John Ridgway, managing partner of PLN Lawyers, Sydney, Australia. As part of the venture, DWT and PLN will enter into a joint venture and Miller will move from Seattle to Sydney and office with PLN. PLN now provides co-ordinated legal and business advisory service to corporate Australian and international clients operating across Australia and the Pacific. More than 20 lawyers with considerable experience in Asia/Pacific legal and business representation, drawn from DWT's U.S. and Shanghai offices and from PLN, will be actively engaged in DWT Pacific.
"With one phone call, companies around the world can now get the help they need across the entire Pacific," said DWT managing partner Dave Baca. "This is new, valuable and, I think, unmatchable. We are closely linking our U.S. and Shanghai offices with our partner in Australia. Adding David Cohen, who was the U.S. representative to the Pacific Community, and the PLN offices in the Pacific provides a unified service platform for clients throughout the Pacific."
The Pacific is seeing substantial new investment, most notably on Guam, which is preparing to become the new home for the military presence that has historically been based in Okinawa. The planned military buildup is expected to bring up to $15 billion of government defense expenditures to Guam and increase the island's population by more than 25 percent. This, in turn, will trigger major opportunities in civilian infrastructure development, finance, commerce, transportation, real estate development, health care, services and many other areas. Elsewhere in the Pacific, resort developers, banks, telecommunications companies and others are actively building new facilities and acquiring existing providers.
"In nearly six years as the U.S. Government's point person for the Pacific, I worked closely with business and government leaders to drive investment to the islands and create new opportunities for the people living there," said Cohen. "I am delighted to be able to continue that work with DWT Pacific, albeit from a different vantage point. We have the right people and the right structure to really add value for companies doing business all across the Pacific."
"DWT Pacific gives us the opportunity to expand and enhance what we have been doing for some time," said Ridgway. "We can now work with David Cohen and the DWT U.S./China offices to provide excellent, locally-knowledgeable service in the U.S., China, Australia and everything in between. DWT Pacific has been launched to serve the growing multi-jurisdictional needs of our major clients and targets."
The DWT Pacific team will offer full-service representation with a particular focus on those areas most relevant to the Pacific region's economic growth - construction, infrastructure, financial services, telecommunications, energy, tourism, hospitality, environment, M&A and general corporate transactions.
About PLN Lawyers Sydney
PLN Lawyers Sydney is an Australia based law firm. It is the home of the Pacific Legal Network and is the gateway for Australian and Asian investment into the Pacific.
Members of the PLN represent business executives, corporate general counsel, government and entrepreneurs engaged in business of all sizes throughout the regions. PLN is an affiliation of independently owned and operated law firms. It remains the only network able to provide legal or business advisory services across the English, French and American parts of the Pacific. For more information, visit www.pln.com.au.
About Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
Davis Wright Tremaine LLP is a business, litigation and regulatory law firm with approximately 500 attorneys in nine offices: Seattle and Bellevue (Wash.), Portland (Ore.), Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., Anchorage (Alaska) and Shanghai, China. For more information, visit www.dwt.com.
Source: Business Wire (Business Wire India)