I was interested to see that The Lawyer has an article today [27 July] by David Rennick, the head of Pinsent Masons’ relatively new Australian outlet, on the competition between English and Australian law firms for prize Chinese’s infrastructure investment work (‘Never mind the Ashes: England and Australia are battling for the Chinese investment prize‘).

When I first arrived in Asia back in the early 1990s, most of the conversations we had with governments and businesses around “investment” in the region nearly always took the path of inbound [into Asia] investment: in that investments largely moved in one direction, from West to East, and appropriately attractive and protective legislatively schemes around those investments were always being sought.

Possibly due to the GFC, although I would be more inclined to say as the likely result of a progression in time and a growth in Asian economies post the Asian Financial Crisis troubles, a shift has taken place: today when we are in conversations around “investment”, this conversation has taken on a new life and we are just as likely to be discussing outbound [from Asian] investments into the West or into other developing nations/areas (such as Africa) as we are about inbound [into Asia] foreign direct investment.

I love infographics and clear evidence (if it was ever needed) of the shift taking place in the conversation taking place here can clearly be seen in two amazing recently published infographics: one by the South China Morning Herald (‘Chinese outbound investment to rise to another record‘) and the New York Times (‘The World According to China‘).

And while both of these show a massive increase in outbound direct investment by China and Chinese companies (and people) over the past decade, decade and half, what they don’t necessarily show is the different reasons/discussions that are taking place for/around these investments.

To be clear, while Asian (including Chinese) companies and governments are investing overseas for a multitude of reasons, they largely centre around two principal reasons:

On the one hand, the governments – including State Owned Corporations – need better returns on their investments than they would otherwise be getting at home or else they need to diversify this investment. We typically see this type of investment with Singapore’s Temasek and GIC (Government of Singapore Investment Corporation). More recently we have seen foreign pension funds investing in Australian infrastructure in this way.

On the other hand, we see investments in western businesses by Asian companies and organisations looking to purchase technical knowhow in order to up-skill themselves. An example of this can be seen with today’s announcement that: “A major Chinese venture firm has launched a US$5 billion fund devoted to buying up Western technology, internet and biotech firms that are looking to enter the Chinese market.”

And it is for this reason that unlike David Rennick I don’t believe English or Australian law firms should be strategically looking at the Chinese for inbound infrastructure investment work (with the caveat that this doesn’t include strategies around the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)), because I believe that type of inbound infrastructure investment work (once Australia can work out a suitably attractive investment vehicle for foreigners to invest in infrastructure) from Asia will more likely come from Korea, Japan and Singapore (under relevant FTA provisions with these countries).

For Chinese related inbound investment work, English and Australian law firms would do far better to be courting M&A and R&D work, and in this field they will find a much hungrier and more sophisticated competitor – the US law firm.