Hires that moved the needle.

The business was entering a critical APAC expansion phase while simultaneously strengthening global regulatory credibility.

The mandate required two leadership hires within the same operating window: the first GM APAC to drive regional growth, and an APAC Chief Compliance Officer to build consistency across jurisdictions as the company scaled internationally.

The two hires were tightly linked from the start.

A high-growth regional operator without institutional credibility would create friction with regulators and counterparties. A purely regulatory hire without commercial alignment would slow expansion momentum.

The searches were therefore calibrated together around one question: what leadership combination would allow the business to scale aggressively while becoming more institutionally credible at the same time.

Both hires were completed within the quarter.

The business entered its next expansion phase with stronger regional leadership, greater institutional credibility, and a more scalable operating foundation across APAC.

The APAC compliance leader was later expanded into a global remit as the company continued scaling internationally.

The client was building a new stablecoin-anchored payments product and needed senior product leadership credible to merchants, regulators, and engineering all at once. The candidate had to combine deep payments product expertise with a clear track record in crypto-native execution.

• Mapped product leaders across both traditional payments rails and crypto-native platforms.
• Calibrated compensation and equity against both fintech and Web3 benchmarks.
• Closed the role in five weeks with a single-finalist outcome the client described as “unmistakable”.

The Head of Product joined in time to shape the product roadmap before public launch. The stablecoin payments line shipped on schedule and the candidate has since taken on broader product leadership across the platform.

The client was building out a cross-border payments compliance function across seven markets simultaneously. The mandate required senior compliance leadership in each market, calibrated to local regulator expectations while reporting into a single global function.

• Built a seven-market compliance hiring program with shared shortlists and rolling calibration calls.
• Coordinated across regional legal counsel, group compliance, and HR functions to keep all seven searches in sync.
• Delivered all seven hires within six months.

The cross-border compliance function went from concept to operational in two quarters. The client passed its next round of regulator reviews across multiple jurisdictions with the new team in place.

The client was preparing the public launch of a stablecoin infrastructure platform but lacked a senior commercial owner. The mandate required someone who could shape go-to-market without needing weeks of context — fluent in the buyer landscape, regulatory trajectory, and the comparable products in market.

• Mapped GTM operators with stablecoin or stablecoin-adjacent commercial experience across payments and crypto.
• Calibrated against a tight set of three benchmark profiles to keep the shortlist focused.
• Delivered a single finalist in week four after running parallel diligence with the founder and board.

The GTM lead joined before launch. The business finally had clear commercial ownership, partnership conversations moved faster, and the launch team had more confidence going into market.

The firm was building out its first foreign office in Singapore and needed a senior corporate partner capable of anchoring outbound China-related work from day one.

The market was narrow. Very few Singapore-qualified partners combined native Mandarin fluency, China cultural alignment, and an active cross-border corporate practice tied to Chinese capital and Southeast Asia expansion. At the same time, more Chinese corporates and private capital were increasingly using Singapore as a regional execution hub.

We approached the move around existing client movement rather than portable revenue projections alone.

The partner was already advising Chinese capital expanding into Southeast Asia, while the firm's clients increasingly required Singapore execution capability on outbound matters. Our role was helping both sides evaluate whether the Singapore platform being built already matched where underlying client demand was moving regionally.

Existing relationships on both sides allowed those conversations to happen candidly from the start.

The firm secured a senior Singapore-based corporate partner as the foundational hire for its foreign office.

The move strengthened the firm's Singapore positioning and outbound Southeast Asia capability while giving the partner a platform aligned with existing regional client movement and cross-border deal flow.

The firm was preparing for a long-term leadership transition within its Hong Kong disputes practice at a time when the market for established Greater China disputes teams had become increasingly concentrated.

The mandate required more than a senior lateral partner. The firm needed a successor capable of preserving institutional client relationships across Hong Kong and Mainland China while maintaining sufficient team depth to support the next phase of the practice.

We approached the mandate around practice continuity rather than portable revenue alone.

The focus was on disputes teams already operating cohesively across partner, counsel, and associate levels, with established Greater China client relationships and sufficient leadership runway still ahead of them. The incoming team also needed confidence that the platform could continue feeding complex Greater China disputes work through Hong Kong over the next cycle.

The conversations remained highly discreet and progressed through long-standing partner relationships and direct client interest rather than broad market outreach.

Strategic discussions and evaluations remain ongoing.

The search has already established a highly targeted succession pipeline aligned with the firm's long-term Hong Kong disputes positioning and broader Greater China practice continuity.

Following the arrival of a senior PE/M&A partner team from a US BigLaw platform, an international law firm needed to upgrade its Southeast Asia associate bench after a sharp increase in high-value deal activity.

The pressure was not headcount alone. The practice required associates capable of handling complex cross-border transactions at the pace and expectations the incoming partners were accustomed to. Historically, the firm had not competed consistently for Magic Circle, Silver Circle, or US BigLaw associate talent.

Compensation alone was unlikely to close the gap. Many candidates were evaluating platform trajectory, partner quality, deal flow sustainability, and long-term career positioning.

Pullman Morrison spent significant time understanding how the incoming partners operated, delegated, and built teams, allowing the search to focus on associates likely to succeed within that environment.

Three of the four hires were completed from top-tier international firms, strengthening the practice's ability to execute increasingly sophisticated regional transactions.

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