Deacons announces two partnership promotions

• Hong Kong’s longest established and largest independent law firm promotes two new partners, reflecting deep bench strengths in Corporate Commercial and Intellectual Property practice.

Hong Kong – 4 January, 2021 – Deacons, Hong Kong’s longest established and largest independent law firm, has strengthened the firm’s partnership with two new promotions, effective from 1 January, 2021.

The two newly appointed partners are Stefano Mariani from the Corporate Commercial group and Kelley Loo from the Intellectual Property group. These promotions reflect Deacons’ continued investment and commitment to providing clients with top-quality talent, and ensure the firm further strengthens its core capabilities in the areas of intellectual property and tax.

Cynthia Chung, Partner and Head of Corporate Commercial at Deacons, said: “It gives me great pleasure to welcome Stefano to the partnership. His dedication to the firm coupled with exceptional individual qualities will strengthen our market-leading offering and continue to enhance our position as Hong Kong’s world-class law firm.”

Charmaine Koo, Partner, Co-Head of Intellectual Property and Head of Intellectual Property Litigation at Deacons, said: “Kelley has been well recognised by clients for the quality of her work and for her wide range of experience in trade mark prosecution, commercial IP and IP litigation. I’m delighted to welcome her to the partnership and her promotion will further strengthen our award-winning IP practice.” 

These appointments bring the total number of partners at Deacons to 53, cementing our position as Hong Kong’s largest independent full-service law firm.

Below are the key details of the new partner appointments:

Stefano Mariani, Partner, Corporate Commercial

Stefano heads the tax and trusts practice at Deacons. He has a broad range of advisory and contentious tax experience, ranging from corporate taxation and group reconstructions to personal taxation and trusts and estate planning and management. He advises on all matters of Hong Kong and international tax law, including tax-efficient structuring and restructuring, and tax appeals before the Board of Review and the higher courts. His experience includes cross-border tax planning and Double Taxation Treaty driven tax structuring. Stefano is also a solicitor advocate with higher rights of audience in civil proceedings before the High Court and Court of Final Appeal.

Stefano speaks English, Italian, French, German and Spanish.

Kelley Loo, Partner, Intellectual Property

Kelley is dual-qualified in both Hong Kong and New Zealand, with extensive experience handling all aspects of IP work ranging from brand clearance, trade mark prosecution work all the way up to IP enforcement proceedings (including disputes involving patent, copyright, registered design, film distribution, computer software licensing and trade secrets amongst others). She also advises clients on all aspects of IP commercial, data protection matters (including handling data breaches) and national security law as relevant to online platform clients.

Kelley is fluent in English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Malay and Hokkien.

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For further information please contact:

Marketing and Communications Department

Tel: +852 2825 9211

Email: [email protected]