Dezan Shira Relocates Senior Personnel Out of China

Dezan Shira & Associates is relocating four senior management personnel from positions in China and redeploying them throughout Southeast Asia. The firm’s Founding Partner Chris Devonshire-Ellis will relocate from Beijing to Singapore to head up the firm’s Asian expansion and development, while Olaf Griese, partner in Shanghai, will move to Delhi to take up the country manager position for the firm’s India operations. Rosario DiMaggio, senior manager in Guangzhou, will be relocated to Hanoi, while Jessica Tou, marketing manager for Northeast Asia will relocate to the United States to assist with the operations of the firm’s offices scheduled to open on the east coast in March.

“The China-based personnel relocating to Asia will be replaced by ethnic Chinese legal and tax professionals rather than Western expatriates, as we now require more local technical expertise in the country,” comments Devonshire-Ellis. “However, each of these personnel are highly experienced and long term employees of the firm and will enable us to fully imprint our style of business operations and infrastructure into our Asian practices as they also develop.”

Along with China, India and Vietnam are experiencing high levels of development, with GDP for 2012 in each of these markets set to grow between 7 percent and 9 percent. Meanwhile, Dezan Shira & Associates’ global accounting network, The Leading Edge Alliance, achieved an annual turnover of US$2.7 billion in 2011, a slight increase on 2010.

“Slower growth in Europe and the United States pushed down growth levels worldwide,” says Devonshire-Ellis. “However, Asia generally remained bouyant. We are pleased to have contributed a larger percentage of the actual year on year growth borne out by an increasingly large portion of contributions from China and India.”

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