We’ve just reviewed the deals we enabled our clients to sign across East Asia since the start of the calendar year — and found we achieved no fewer than 22. That’s even more than we’d normally expect in a 12-week period, despite the region being hit hard by the coronavirus.
The deals were for North American and European firms in the medtech, electronics, automotive, software and intellectual property sectors. They encompassed licence agreements as well as product and service sales.
The contracts were with East Asian corporations including:
- telecoms giant Huawei and a major LED display firm in China
- Panasonic, Ricoh, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Kyorin Pharmaceutical, industrial firm Komatsu and $45 bn trading group Itochu in Japan
- LG Electronics, Samsung and two specialist IP law firms in South Korea
We brokered many of these deals despite the COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown of parts of Asia by finding creative ways to continue delivering sales programmes for our clients — working remotely and presenting to Asian corporations by video conference.
In certain cases, the shutdown actively helped us conclude contracts: delays in some Asian corporations’ in-house R&D programmes prompted them to buy in tech from western firms to avoid falling behind with product developments.
Jeremy Shaw, our Head of Asia, says: “It’s been a testing time for everyone in the region, but our teams have shown great spirit in finding ways around the obstacles and pressing ahead on our clients’ behalf. So it’s extremely rewarding to see this paying off in the number of deals we’ve struck — some despite the outbreak and some to help Asian companies manage its impact.
“While the rest of the world is now racing to get to grips with the virus, China, Korea and Japan are carefully getting back to business as usual. This is opening up even more opportunities for western firms as East Asia’s corporations look at what they need to do to catch up lost ground.”