Two months after absorbing a New Zealand maritime boutique, the Sydney insurance law firm has hired a shipping and commodities disputes team in Singapore, and it says more are coming
Wotton Kearney has spent the past two months building something it never really had: a marine practice that stretches from the top of New Zealand's South Island to the Gulf of Thailand. The newest piece landed this month, when the Sydney-headquartered insurance and risk firm hired partner Karnan Thirupathy and special counsel Charlene Sim from Kennedys to set up a dedicated marine, trade and commodities practice in Singapore.
The pair and their team will work across the firm's Singapore and Bangkok offices, acting for insurers, P&I clubs, commodity traders, shipowners and charterers, the firm said in an announcement.
It is a familiar recruiting ground. When Wotton Kearney first set up in Singapore in mid-2024, the office was built around Ben Nicholson and Tom Morrison, both of whom came across from Kennedys. Nicholson, now managing partner for Asia, said clients in the sector need advisers who grasp "both the legal complexity and the commercial realities" of doing business across the region.
Marine has been on the to-do list for a while. When the firm announced its Bangkok office in May 2025, chief executive partner David Kearney told Asia Business Law Journal that "we are also looking to build out our marine capability". Sixteen months later, it has.
Thirupathy is the headline signing. He had been a Kennedys partner since 2011 and has more than 25 years of experience in Asia, running international arbitrations and cross-border disputes in shipping, commodities and insurance. Qualified in Singapore and in England and Wales, he appears in arbitrations seated in London, Singapore and Hong Kong, sits as an arbitrator himself, and advises shipping and commodities clients on sanctions, which has become a busy corner of the market.
Sim has been in practice for 11 years, most of them working alongside Thirupathy. Her disputes work covers LNG and commodity sale and purchase contracts, contracts of affreightment, charterparties and marine insurance policies.
The team arrives with a fresh win on the board. According to the firm, it recently secured more than US$140 million for a global energy trader against a state-owned energy company in an LCIA arbitration over LNG supply.
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The case for Singapore makes itself. The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore says the port handled a record 44.66 million TEUs in 2025, up 8.6% on the year before, while vessel arrivals reached 3.22 billion gross tonnage and marine fuel sales hit 56.77 million tonnes. Its ship registry grew by about 27% to become the world's fourth largest.
The waters around it are also where ships tend to come to grief. Allianz Commercial's shipping safety review ranks South China, Indochina, Indonesia and the Philippines as the world's top hotspot for total vessel losses, with 255 over the past decade, and puts hull claims costs per vessel about a third above pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile Asian cargo premiums grew 8.8% in 2024, against 1.6% globally, according to the International Union of Marine Insurance.
Add sanctions and war risk to that mix and the disputes pipeline looks healthy. Trouble in the Strait of Hormuz has already pushed marine brokers to rethink war-risk exposure, and the Lloyd's Market Association has drafted wording that lets insurers cancel cover for tankers that pay Iran for safe passage.
The Singapore hires are the Asian half of a wider build. On 1 August the firm folded in Oceanlaw, a New Zealand maritime and fisheries practice, opening an office in Nelson, its fifth in New Zealand and 14th across Asia Pacific. That team now sits alongside the firm's transport, trade and logistics group, led by Naraya Lamart, with marine partners Richard Arrage, Aisha Lala and Justin Khouri.
Wotton Kearney is not the only one hiring marine talent in Singapore. Marsh Risk Asia added three senior marine and cargo specialists in July, and Lockton appointed a regional marine and transportation growth leader.
In Bangkok, the firm's second Asian office opened in May 2025 under partner Ian Johnston, an arbitration specialist who joined from Clyde & Co after an earlier stint at Kennedys.
Founded in 2002 with two partners, Wotton Kearney now has more than 100 partners and over 550 legal professionals across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Thailand.
For Kennedys, the run of departures is hard to miss. Thirupathy follows Nicholson and Morrison out of its Singapore office and into Wotton Kearney's, and Morrison has said on LinkedIn that more additions will follow in the coming weeks.
