Dezan Shira & Associates’ 25th Anniversary Celebration Dinner

On November 10 2017, Dezan Shira & Associates hosted a gala dinner in Shanghai to celebrate the firm’s 25th anniversary of doing business in Asia. More than 150 clients, partners, employees, and alumni joined this celebration event, sharing their story with Dezan Shira & Associates.

For the opening speech, Chris Devonshire-Ellis, founding partner of Dezan Shira & Associates, shared how the firm has grown to what it is now in the past 25 years: ‘Dezan Shira & Associates was founded as a limited company in Hong Kong with a small office in Shenzhen, supported by two Sichuan ladies acting as interpreters and administrative staff in 1992. Later, more talents including current equity partners: Alberto Vettoretti, Sabrina Zhang, and Adam Livermore joined the team and developed the firm to a pan-Asia multi-disciplinary professional services firm, providing legal, tax and operational advisory to international corporate investors.’

Devonshire-Ellis said, ‘ Thanks to the great work of all our current and previous employees, as well as our Asian Alliance partners in 28 regional offices throughout Asia, we managed to provide services to over 10,000 foreign investors from more than 90 countries worldwide.’

Following the speech by Devonshire-Ellis, Dezan Shira & Associates unveiled a new corporate video. The video introduced the firm’s mission, business scope, service lines, as well as a brief on the business environment in Asia. Staff from various Dezan Shira offices showed their working environment in the video, which gives the audience of a comprehensive understanding of the firm. After the corporate video, Dezan Shira & Associates shared photos from the firm’s growth story, including various offices, events, meetings, as well as team building activities, bringing the past 25 years’ memory of the firm back to peoples’ minds.

Later, managing partner Alberto Vettoretti gave an introduction of where the firm sees itself in the future. Vettoretti said, ‘Dezan Shira & Associates has a unique combination of geographical spread in Asia, cross border practical experience, and talent. We are one of the very few players able to provide a total Asia solution. However, the Asian market keeps changing and the required competency is also changing, and IT is a major factor. The firm is going through a profound period of change with a lot of great young talents who represent the next generation joining us. The new opportunities are opening up throughout the region, including with a new wave of capabilities to sell to China, and educating businesses how to do that, in addition to new trade routes opening up involving China, Russia, India and ASEAN. We are, and will be, expanding in all these spaces.’

To share the happiness of reaching a milestone of 25 years, Dezan Shira & Associates partners Sabrina Zhang and Adam Livermore hosted a lucky draw in the middle of the night and 10 lucky guests from client firms, partner firms, as well as Dezan Shira & Associates’ employees, shared great prizes.   Devonshire-Ellis and Vettoretti sponsored a special prize that was won by a Dezan Shira alumni and a guest from a client firm: a one-week trip to Sri-Lanka.

The event ended up with a group photo of all the guests taken alongside the South Bund with the Pudong skyline in the background. Dezan Shira & Associates will continue to push on with our unique style to introducing businesses to Asia, and continue to partner with our clients for growth in Asia.