Financial services recruitment company Morgan McKinley will open three Asian offices by the end of July in the firm’s first drive toward international expansion. Teams of five consultants to staff the new operations will be in place by late 2005.

Brian Hamill, chief executive of Morgan McKinley’s parent company Imprint plc, said experienced consultants from Morgan McKinley’s London office will head each of the new operations in Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo. The remaining four posts at each office will be filled locally.

“We’ve got three offices in the Far East that operate under the Imprint and WoodHamill brands already out there, so fundamentally, we’re putting the Morgan McKinley brand into each of those locations,” Hamill told Recruiter.

Morgan McKinley’s London clients have already signalled their approval of the eastward expansion. “One client last week gave us 160 roles [to fill] in Singapore, and we haven’t even opened in Singapore yet,” Hamill said. “Our only issue then… is can we generate the candidates quickly enough. But we’ve got an international candidate team that’s been working for three months on doing nothing but generating candidates for Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore.”

Imprint acquired Morgan McKinley in April 2005 for £24m. International expansion was planned for some time, because the company’s multinational clients prefer to work with global suppliers, Hamill said. Michael Page International and Robert Walters are seen as the key competitors in the Asian market.

“Their strongest areas of performance in the last three years have been Asia-Pacific,” Hamill said. “We expect Morgan McKinley in all three [Asian] locations by the end of the year. We think it’s a low-risk option. We expect them to be profitable pretty much straight away.”

Australia and South Africa have also previously been cited as potential expansion targets for Morgan McKinley, but in a recent interview with Recruiter, Hamill discussed only Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Ireland as additional opportunities. Dubai, he said, “is a high growth area. There’s huge investment going into Dubai. We’ll either buy a business in Dubai in the next 12 months or we’ll open an office.”