Asia's Financial Future: Insights from Justine Lau and Claire Fulton

In September 2025, Global Restructuring Review, a specialist industry publication which provides news and analysis service on cross-border restructuring and insolvency law, featured Mourant’s Hong Kong litigation head Justine Lau and London-based finance partner Claire Fulton in its 'Heads-Up' interview series. 

'Heads Up' is a series of exclusive interviews with leading international restructuring and insolvency experts, featuring their forecasts and perspectives on key market developments.

We have republished the article in full below. This first featured on Global Restructuring Review on 2 September 2025. 

Mourant’s Hong Kong litigation head Justine Lau and London-based finance partner Claire Fulton sat down with GRR to discuss the welcome rise of women in leadership roles, how a slowing of inbound investment into mainland China has resulted in opportunities for investors in Southeast Asian jurisdictions and why traditional banks and the private credit industry are working “hand in hand” in Asia.

Fulton started her career working as a finance lawyer in Edinburgh in 2001 but decided to move to New Zealand a couple of years later in what she says was a “relatively unusual” path to take. While in New Zealand, she began working for Buddle Findlay with a partner who was heavily involved with INSOL New Zealand, which ended up helping to shape her career. “I was still very much on the banking finance side, but I was introduced to the world of restructuring and insolvency,” she says. 

Fulton moved to Hogan Lovells in Hong Kong in 2007, which was looking to rebuild its finance practice after losing its existing finance partner. “I joined to help with the rebuild,” she tells GRR. “The financial crisis hit less than 12 months later and that's really when I started to get increasingly involved with the restructuring world, but I continued to focus on the finance side of things.”

After seven years with Lovells, the opportunity at Mourant presented itself. “I was very certain I wanted to be a partner in private practice and Mourant was looking for someone to come in under the umbrella of the banking and finance world but also to build a non-contentious restructuring practice,” she says. “That was over 10 years ago, and it's been great; I haven't looked back.”

Lau, meanwhile, qualified in Melbourne at Maddocks into a general commercial litigation practice. “I did all sorts of general commercial litigation work, but it was just after 9/11 and the economic climate was challenging,” she tells GRR. “There was quite a bit of lender-side enforcement work and that’s really where I cut my teeth, working on large-scale liquidation jobs and restructurings via voluntary administration.”

By 2008, she was offered a job at Mayer Brown in Hong Kong to work in its restructuring and insolvency practice. “I remember the month I moved well because it rained every day and I thought I’d just made the worst mistake, not least of all because I left behind a very busy practice at a time when I was on a promotion track,” she says. “Being a litigator, I had to qualify in Hong Kong straight away, so while I was studying for my conversion exams and also working, as tends to happen in Hong Kong during the northern summer, work was slow.”

But, in a serendipitous turn, INSOL’s annual conference that year was held in Shanghai in September 2008 and Lau says she can remember Hong Kong based practitioners trying to return to the city urgently when the news came through that Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy.

“Happily for me, Mayer Brown was retained by KPMG as the liquidators of Lehman's Asian entities. The litigation and restructuring work that came out of that was the largest I’ve ever worked on, and it stood us in really good stead,” Lau tells GRR.

She spent the next decade at Mayer Brown as a Hong Kong lawyer, working on the MF Global bankruptcy, the restructuring of electronics group Z-Obee via parallel schemes, and other large, high-profile contentious restructurings, when the opportunity presented itself to move offshore and into partnership, which, like Fulton, she says is something she had always wanted.

As Hong Kong has not signed up to the UNCITRAL Model Law, Lau says she had a lot of experience as coordinating counsel onshore and cooperating with counsel across geographies to effectively restructure businesses with operations in Hong Kong and mainland China. She tells GRR she realised that experience could be transferred offshore. 

“The benefit of being offshore is that, at Mayer Brown, I was pure R&I and that's all I did,” Lau says. “Having come from a broader commercial litigation practice, it's nice to land back into a broader practice because R&I is cyclical.”

The Mourant Hong Kong office was established in 2012 so both Lau and Fulton found themselves there in its relative infancy. “We basically had a blank canvas to build what we hope we have built, which is a very integrated contentious and non-contentious restructuring offering,” Fulton tells GRR.

“Does it fill 100 per cent of each of our practices? No, but that's the beauty of our backgrounds in terms of being able to draw on our lending, special sits and general com lit backgrounds,” Fulton says.

The fact that they both practised in Hong Kong before moving offshore also meant they knew the market. “If you know the players, you know strategically what you would do as coordinating counsel, and I think it makes team collaborations a lot easier because you can understand the overall strategy even if you don’t agree,” Lau says.

What skillsets are required to manage a successful cross-border practice?

Justine Lau: We must be agile and think outside the box to achieve results in certain circumstances given Hong Kong’s restrictions in terms of the restructuring tools available. For example, when onshore, I worked on the Bermuda-Hong Kong parallel processes for electronics group Z-Obee in 2017, which saw the Hong Kong company carry out a provisional liquidation in Bermuda. Obviously offshore we have different options available.

What we must try to do is work out how we can use different tools in different geographies. It requires coordination and a strategic approach at the outset. I think my takeaway from the bench in each of the jurisdictions we see on our mandates is that they are all trying not to step on one another in terms of what they consider to be their jurisdiction.

For offshore-incorporated companies, the offshore courts will naturally say they have jurisdiction. But I’m mindful of Cayman’s Justice Doyle's comments that there shouldn't be any sort of grandstanding because you don't achieve anything, nor is it commercial for creditors to just say, 'Well, this is mine and I will deal with it this way.' 

I don’t think there is a continuing tension between the jurisdictions but it's certainly something that all parties in cross-border mandates are far more cognisant of – there needs to be a degree of compromise. 

What kind of work are you doing at the moment?

Claire Fulton: On my side and the more contentious side of the practice, there's still a significant volume of advisory work, particularly from creditors looking for advice in terms of what their potential enforcement or other options are. But we’re seeing a drop in appointments in terms of actual enforcement actions. There was a peak towards the back end of the covid pandemic when we were being asked to help creditors appoint insolvency practitioners with a view to facilitating asset sales, but I think it's entirely unsurprising that has dried up given the market conditions.

We are seeing more special situations on the distressed debt and direct lending side of things. A lot of my clients now are in the private capital and credit fund space and we’re beginning to see some activity, which is really encouraging. It's heartening to see green shoots and I think the market sentiment is that there will hopefully be more M&A activity in the coming months.

JL: Our litigation practice in Hong Kong has been quite busy with board advisory mandates and shareholder disputes, so it is nice to have a bit of a mix. 

What challenges are facing practices generally at the moment?

CF: From an offshore, Cayman and BVI, perspective we need M&A activity to pick up and the downstream new money deals to happen and that will give the market confidence to restructure and carry out workouts and sale processes. It's just a cycle, but that has been a challenge.

There are signs things are picking up, which hopefully will remove what I perceive as uncertainty in the non-contentious restructuring world. I assume that is facing the Hong Kong lawyers as much as it is facing the BVI and Cayman lawyers. It would be great to see that M&A activity pick up; to see valuations stack up a bit more so there's a bit more confidence in the market in that space. 

JL: I agree with Claire. Another challenge across Asia practices is pressure on fee structures – everyone is looking for cost-effective solutions from all advisers. 

In which emerging jurisdictions do you see value for the future?

CF: I think in this part of the world, the reported lack of desire for inbound investment into China is resulting in investors looking at other opportunities in closely located jurisdictions. You hear about manufacturing plants popping up in Vietnam or the Philippines so it's probably likely that certain Southeast Asian emerging markets may benefit.

From our perspective, it depends entirely on how the investment is structured. China is particularly fond of the BVI as a jurisdiction; they're very comfortable with it. European and American investors are very comfortable with investing through a Cayman fund. So there’s every chance that if investment has been coming into these emerging jurisdictions from places like the US through a Cayman structure, then we will continue to see the benefit of those structures.

JL: It’s about diversification. Mainland China remains relevant but there is an opportunity for Southeast Asian economies. For us, it remains to be seen how it will play out in the restructuring and insolvency space because it depends on industry/sector and is influenced by risk tolerance and investment strategy.

Have you seen a lot of work in the Chinese property space given how comfortable those companies are with structuring through the BVI and Cayman?

CF: We’ve been quite heavily involved in some of those situations over the past few years. I know liquidators have been appointed in a number of situations now but prior to that there was a huge amount of activity and it felt as if creditors were just trying to shore up exposure and make sure they were in the best possible position. 

There was a lot of narrative that the property market must come back given the size of the population in the mainland, but I think the takeaway is that it hasn’t come back yet, although various governmental stimulus is being put in place to assist with this. 

JL: There has been a more recent lack of appetite for foreign creditors to formally enforce. There’s internal pressure to properly consider options, whether to proceed onshore or offshore, and to seek advice on the relative merits of any enforcement. Pragmatically, stakeholders are less inclined to spend good money after bad, particularly if it may not result in a return. 

Private credit may have more litigation appetite and might be more inclined to seek enforcement, but they're also very commercial about it. 

CF: I agree that the credit funds will typically have more of an appetite than traditional financial institutions but, critically, the reason they have more of an appetite is because they have relevant individuals on the ground in these jurisdictions. They are more comfortable with a loan-to-own structure because they have expertise; they know the right people to go on the boards; they work with existing management; they know how to build or develop a business.

You've both been here in Hong Kong for almost 20 years and seen that increase in private credit. How else have your practices changed during that time? 

CF: When I first came to Hong Kong, debt was absolutely the domain of the traditional banking institutions. We would work consistently on large, syndicated club deals. That's what we did. 

I have recently relocated back to our London office, although I'm still working in the BVI and Cayman financing and restructuring practice. I haven't been in London long enough to properly comment but the private credit industry is incredibly advanced in the States and in Europe, and Asia I think is on the way. I’ve certainly seen the Asia private credit journey from inception over the last six to eight years. It's not as advanced but we have seen significant changes in the firm's client base and, strategically as a firm, we are now pivoting to private credit.

It's probably not surprising, given that we're an offshore law firm and we can advise on the entire fund lifecycle, from cradle to grave, if we make that a considered focus. I've been pleasantly surprised to see how the banking industry and the private credit industry are working hand in hand in Asia because the banks have identified that there's room for both in the life cycle of a corporate.

We've lived through the times of funds being raised for specific sectors. Historically in Asia, funds would be raised for the real estate sector, for example, but now they’re raising distressed debt funds to be specifically invested in distressed debt situations and there's space for credit funds to work in the life cycle of the average corporate group. That’s been the biggest change in the 17 years I've been here.

JL: It is also super encouraging that we now have far more women coming through and into leadership roles in the next generation of practitioners. Seeing more women in leadership can only be good for the way in which we advise our clients. Diversity in talent and teams leads to diversity in strategies and potential likely outcomes. I think it is very encouraging for our industry to see women succeed and lead in R&I. 

When I first came to Hong Kong, I joined IWIRC Hong Kong, having previously been heavily involved in several women's networks in Australia. At that stage, the R&I space was very homogenous. There has been a sea change for the good, of women not just wanting to be involved in R&I but leading highly effective teams in their own way: demonstrating they don't have to behave in a particular way to do the job well. 

Finally, how do you try to maintain a work-life balance? What keeps you busy outside the office? 

CF: In our position as partners, we must lead by example. Justine's a fantastic runner and has completed all the marathon World Majors, and I still play a lot of hockey. 

I have three daughters, and I'm particularly passionate about sports, which is how I wind down. As a firm, we've been big supporters of women in sport: we sponsor the Hong Kong Football Club rugby section and one of our other partners was recently moderating a panel at the club with five or six female sporting advocates. We are all so cognisant of the benefits of having a work-life balance, and it doesn’t have to be through sports, but you need a release from work.

There’s so much narrative about mental health and some of the stories are just heartbreaking. To the extent that we can do anything as a firm to support our team, we're passionate about that. As leaders in this office and in the firm, it is important that we act as role models. Within the boundaries of client expectations, we really try and model that. 

Flexible working has been another key change during our time in Asia, and I think that’s the best thing that came out of the covid pandemic.

JL: I agree with Claire. Particularly for litigation practices, the tail end of our days are spent on handover with our Caribbean colleagues but I encourage the team to take downtime when we can and to carve out personal time to maintain balance, whether going to the gym or for me, running. 

I think the reality of having an offshore litigation practice based in Asia is that you will inevitably spend occasional evenings working and, during the pandemic, attending remote hearings via Zoom at unsociable hours. There won't always be work-life balance; it's therefore important to grab it when you can. Hopefully our teams see us walk the walk.