Johnson Stokes & Master
- 香港总商会会员编号 :
- HKJ0034
Johnson Stokes & Master
Ever since joining the HKGCC in 1895 Johnson Stokes & Master and the Chamber have enjoyed a rich and varied history.
Simon Ip, senior partner of Johnson Stokes & Master, said that the association between the two has been a very valuable and mutually supportive one.
"Through our long history of membership we have utilised the Chamber both to expand our networks and as an information provider for business in Hong Kong and the region. We regularly attend Chamber functions, and will continue to build on this important relationship in the future," he said.
Johnson Stokes & Master started life in Hong Kong in 1863, although it was known by the name Edmund Sharp at that time, the sole proprietor. By the time the firm joined the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce in 1895 it was known as Johnson Stokes & Master.
In 1895, Alfred Bulmer Johnson who had joined previously in 1876, was now senior partner,with Alfred Stokes and Godfrey Master as supporting partners. At the time of joining the Chamber Johnson Stokes & Master was already legal adviser to The Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation. Shipping had revived from a slump a year before and the firm was instructed on a series of cases in the Admiralty Court. The Shanghai office, set up in 1893 at the International Settlement in Shanghai, was also doing well.
On December 1, 1896, Johnson resigned his position of Crown Solicitor which he had held from 1882 and he also retired from private practice at the firm. On this occasion, the succession of the Crown Solicitor-ship passed not to the firm's next in command -- Stokes who was in Shanghai, running the Shanghai branch of the firm -- but to the next most senior solicitor in the colony, Henry Lardner Dennys.
In July 1897, Johnson Stokes & Master engaged the firm's first Hong Kong-born solicitor -- the Oxford-educated Wei Wah-on, son of a compradore of the Chartered Mercantile Bank.
In 1936, after a quarter of a century in Prince's Building, the firm moved into the air-conditioned offices of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Building. After the Second World War, Hong Kong was in a sorry state but confidence in the colony remained and Johnson Stokes & Master resumed business in the Bank Building.
In the early 1960s, the firm rationalised its working methods and embraced technology. Solicitors began to focus on specialised practice areas. The late sixties and early seventies saw a revival in the property field and financial markets were growing like never before. The firm's growth paralleled Hong Kong's rapid economic development and in the 1970s and 1980s, responding to the expansion of other regional economies, Johnson Stokes & Master began establishing offices in other major Asian cities.
