Baker’s new APAC chair outlines India, regional strategies

Baker McKenzie recently appointed Michael Wong as its new Asia-Pacific chair, in charge of setting regional strategy for 17 offices in the region. Here he shares how the firm has been manoeuvring to help its India-related clients, and his thoughts on regional recovery.

India Business Law Journal: Describe the firm’s strategy regarding India?

Michael Wong: We basically look at India from two lenses. We look at it from the lens of our international clients, the key clients. We go to them and ask, ‘what is the piece of strategy in your business that is In- dia-related, and how can we support that?’ We cannot be on the ground supporting them on a purely inbound matter, but we can support them by knowing them, know- ing their global strategy, and working with our corresponding law firms in India in a way that we can give them a more tailored result, a better result than if they just go to any law firm in India. That’s one way.

The other way that we see is work- ing with Indian outbound companies. Every year, we go through these lists and look at what these companies are, then try to focus on them, trying to bring our value proposition to them.

We [normally] go to India at least twice or three times a year, we do a general coun- sel night, bring our best people there, and talk about all of this. This year, unfortu- nately, because of covid, we could not go, but we were still able to do a bunch of web and video presentations in conjunction with our panel firms in India.

One additional thing that we are trying to do is, if other foreign law firms that go to India are trying to sell their capabilities in M&A, private equity, tax, etc., we are trying to do it a little bit more. We are try- ing to sell the clients a bit of the industry knowledge, and what we see in a particular industry in other parts of the world, which may be of interest to Indian companies. So, we say, ‘This is what happens that we see in Silicon Valley’ because India has a great connection with the tech space in America.