Formerly Hong Kong-based Bruce Cooper joins Clayton Utz’s Sydney banking and financial services team.

The firm’s chief executive partner, David Fagan, said Cooper’s appointment represents anticipated growth in project finance work.

"Project finance is an area where we anticipate strong growth opportunities flowing from the Federal government's ongoing commitment to significant investment in infrastructure projects and the continuing energy and resources boom driven by demand from China and India.”

Clayton Utz has lost some major legal players in recent months.

Paris Petranis, a Clayton Utz senior associate, recently left to join Middletons’ corporate and commercial group in Melbourne, specialising in life sciences, health and aged care. Less than a month earlier, Middletons took another Clayton Utz lawyer in technology and innovations expert Kate Marshall.

Meanwhile, the new recruit has spent the past 18 years of his career in Asia, most recently in Hong Kong where he led Freshfields' regional finance practice group overseeing a practice that spanned from China to Nigeria. He also practised with Freshfields in Singapore for 14 years, covering jurisdictions from Indonesia to India.

In Asia, Cooper workedon a wide range of transactions across the banking, infrastructure, project finance and energy and natural resources sectors in Australia, the Pacific Islands, South East Asia, North Asia, the Caspian region, Africa and the Middle East.