Reed Smith has boosted its corporate and transport offering in Singapore with the recruitment of partners Monoj Purushothaman and Simon Spells from Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (BCLP). 

Purushothaman, formerly head of BCLP’s corporate team in Singapore, will join Reed Smith’s global corporate group. He brings with him more than 15 years of experience in cross-border M&A and private equity matters, including foreign direct investment advisory work.

He trained and qualified at Sidley Austin in Singapore before joining legacy firm Berwin Leighton Paisner as a senior associate in 2007, making partner in 2015. Fluent in Malay, Indonesian, and English, his advisory practice includes offering assistance on managing pre-investment anti-bribery and corruption risks, as well as assisting US and other international clients on South East Asia regional employment and global mobility matters covering a broad range of sectors from real estate to agriculture.

Spells joins Reed Smith’s transportation industry group where he will be head of the firm’s aviation practice in Asia, having previously led BCLP’s transport and asset finance team in Singapore. Like his colleague, Spells spent more than a decade working for BCLP, making partner in 2016, having trained and qualified at legacy Thomas Eggar – now Irwin Mitchell – in the UK. 

He has significant experience advising financial institutions, leasing companies, airlines and manufacturers across a range of international assets structured finance and leasing transactions, all of which will be useful in pandemic-era restructuring deals. He also has notable bank-side experience thanks to secondments at Barclays Bank, DVB Bank and Standard Chartered.

Kyri Evagora, Reed Smith’s Asia managing partner, described them as “fantastic additions” to the Singapore office, and said the firm's regional offering would continue to grow “in line with the evolving needs of our clients”.

Transferring across with the duo are six other team members: one associate is joining the corporate team; while the transport team welcomes one counsel, two associates and two paralegals.

The latest hires come hard on the heels of the departure of Reed Smith’s Singapore managing partner, commodities specialist Peter Zaman, to HFW earlier this month. Also this month, Squire Patton Boggs bolstered its recently launched commodities and shipping practice with the hire of Clifford Chance partner Kate Sherrard and an associate, while last October, King & Spalding added two partners to its Singapore corporate and finance group from Shearman & Sterling.

Last year, Reed Smith’s Singapore alliance partner, Resource Law, hired director Jonny Lim, who joined from from Shook Lin & Bok in May, and associate and master mariner Mark Myles, who joined from Reed Smith in March.