CANDEY hires former King & Spalding Tokyo arbitration duo

Chris Bailey and Oliver McEntee have joined CANDEY in London having previously worked together as the senior members of King & Spalding’s International Arbitration team in Asia.

Chris joins as partner and Global Head of Energy & Infrastructure at the elite disputes specialist founded over 15 years ago in London and now with offices in New York, Vienna and most recently the BVI. Whilst onboarding in the London office after 3 years in the arbitral hub of Singapore, a significant part of Chris’ brief will be to expand the firm’s global offering into the Asia Pacific region.

Founding partner Ashkhan Candey comments:

“The hires of Chris and Oliver is a key component in the firm’s drive to become one of a select group of the elite dispute specialists with a truly global reach. With offices in Europe, the Americas and Offshore in the BVI and strong practices in Africa and the CIS, the next obvious regions for the firm are the Asia Pacific and the Middle East. We are committed to growth and investment in both, and a presence in the Asia Pacific will make us one of the very few elite disputes specialists to cover the globe.

We are also acutely aware of the increasingly cross-border nature of our work, and see significant opportunity arising not only within the Asia Pacific region, but also from investment from, amongst others, Chinese, Indian, Japanese and South Korean corporates into EMEA jurisdictions. We also see opportunities arising from investments made by both Asia based corporates and UHNW individuals through offshore jurisdictions such as the BVI where the firm as a physical presence. Of course, servicing existing clients on matters arising out of their investments into the Asia Pacific region will also play an important part of our Asia Pacific practice.

We very much look forward to watching Chris and Oliver drive our Asia Pacific capabilities forward. Exciting times for both them and the firm.”

Chris has been in private practice for close to 25 years of which 18 have been in the Asia Pacific region and the last 12 as partner. He spent the best part of 15 years with two of the world's Top 5 GAR 30 international arbitration firms in Herbert Smith and King & Spalding, and joins an increasing number of Herbert Smith alum in the firm’s partnership alongside James Collins and Ellen-Louise Moens.

He practised with Herbert Smith across its London, Tokyo and Bangkok offices, was a founding partner of King & Spalding’s Tokyo office and has spent the last 3 years as an equity partner with Stephenson Harwood in Singapore. Chris has therefore been based in both civil and common law jurisdictions, and he has also undertaken a client secondment to a global trading house and, in addition to counsel work, sits as an arbitrator. He specializes in all forms of alternative dispute resolution, and represents clients in a wide variety of complex high-value cross-border commercial disputes which regularly include claims for in excess of a billion dollars. His matters predominantly arise out of the energy, resource, transport, infrastructure, financial services, media and IT sectors, with Chris having a particular expertise in oil and gas, construction and investment treaty cases. A number of his recent cases have been tracked by and reported in Global Arbitration Review.

He is also is a Solicitor Advocate, All Higher Courts of England & Wales; a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators; a panel arbitrator of numerous institutions including the JCAA, KCAB and SIAC; and a certified Singapore International Mediation Centre Specialist Mediator. His matters are submitted to arbitral institutions around the world, and national courts including those of Australia, England & Wales, France, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Singapore, Thailand and the U.S. On the regulatory front, Chris has been involved in full-scale corruption investigations involving the U.S. Department of Justice, the UK Serious Fraud Office and the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, as well as investigations arising out of transactions in Africa and the Middle East. 

In terms of market recognition, Chris is ranked as both a Global and Southeast Asia Leader by Lexology Index (formerly Who's Who Legal) Arbitration; has been individually listed for the 10th year by Chambers for Arbitration with both Band 1 and 2 rankings and as a Leading Individual in Legal 500 Asia-Pacific; has also been listed by both the Chambers and Legal 500 directories for Construction Disputes; and is listed by LawDragon as one of the 500 Leading Global Litigators. Recent commentary includes: "Chris is one of the leading advocates in the [Asia Pacific] region. A true expert in the international disputes field in Asia … advising on disputes in relation to energy projects … with expertise in international arbitration."

Oliver joins the firm as consultant and one of a growing number of barristers at the firm. He has also practiced at the employed bar in leading US firms in London (Debevoise), in Singapore (White & Case) and, with Chris, in Tokyo (King & Spalding). He has acted in commercial arbitrations under the SIAC, ICC, LCIA, UNCITRAL and JCAA institutional rules as well as ad hoc arbitrations in a wide range of fields including construction, mining, oil and gas, automotive and real estate investment sectors. In addition, having lived, worked and studied in Japan, Oliver not only has extensive experience of Japanese culture and working with Japanese clients, but he also speaks and writes fluent Japanese as a former Daiwa scholar. This builds upon the firm’s existing Asian language capabilities of Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi and Gujarati. Oliver also has fluent French and German and took a First in Law from Balliol College, Oxford.

With a prior track record of working on billion-dollar arbitrations and even a rare JCAA merits hearing with King & Spalding, Chris and Oliver join with extensive experience advising as a team on complex, high-value, cross-borders disputes across the Asia Pacific region. They onboard with a number of hearings scheduled over their first months with the firm arising out of mining and construction projects in Southeast Asia. Of note, they are also working in close collaboration with both Japanese and Singapore counsel, which aligns with the firm’s approach of collaborating hand-in-hand with local and regional counsel around the world.

In related news widely reported in the legal press last week, the firm enjoyed success in an English Commercial Court jurisdiction and set aside judgment in the USD 13.8 billion case brought by Russian businessman Ziyavudin Magomedov alongside firms such as Herbert Smith and Quinn Emanuel. The Quinn team is led by Chris’ former head of group from his Herbert Smith London days, Ted Greeno - now co-managing partner of the Quinn London office.