Yen-Thaw (pictured), who had set up and managed small corporate firm Yang Lawyers since 1999 after having worked at intellectual property (IP) firm Remfry & Sagar followed by J Sagar Associates (JSA) and a stint in Tokyo in the early nineties, will relocate to Singapore as a Lexygen partner from 10 January 2011.

The firm had opened in Singapore in June 2009 with Lexygen’s Bangalore lawyers visiting part-time. Senior associate Madhumita Sangma has now spent the past three months in Singapore full-time, said founding partner Vijay Sambamurthi.

Sambamurthi told Legally India that the idea behind the office was always to be a fully functional fee-earning office: “The model was quite clearly to set up a real delivery location and frankly we wouldn’t need to have a senior associate if it was a pure business development office.

“The goal is to aim for a very long term future there and we are pretty much setting up the office to be doing everything that we are doing in India – which means a lot of private equity, a lot of M&A activity. We also see a lot of scope for JVs and other miscellaneous kind of work, which is pretty much what we’ve been doing over the last 16 to 17 months there.”

Yen-Thaw said that his previous practice was focused mostly on mergers, joint ventures and foreign direct investment (FDI) work, with a personal practice also in intellectual property. His firm consisted of 12 lawyers the past said Yen-Thaw but explained that he had gradually reduced the size over time with all remaining lawyers now having found jobs elsewhere so he could join Lexygen in Singapore.

“The focus was more to get into specialisation, which Lexygen was offering,” said Yen-Thaw, adding that both he and Sambamurthi jointly had the idea to come together.

Yen-Thaw will be Lexygen’s third partner, after principal associate Roshan Thomas was promoted to the partnership in April 2010.