Over the last year, compliance has topped the tables for job-growth in Hong Kong, according to new figures from Robert Walters, and is rising rapidly elsewhere in the hubs of Asia.

In Hong Kong, legal and compliance job advertising volumes saw the largest growth between Q1 2014 and Q1 2015, increasing by 38% year-on-year. Mandarin-speaking lawyers were particularly in demand as more boutique law firms established their presence in Hong Kong in association with mainland Chinese law firms. Compliance people were most sought-after among the buy-side and private equity relationship firms.

By contrast, accounting and finance job advertising in Hong Kong grew by 29%; IT grew by 19%; HR by 8% and merchandising and purchasing dropped by a quarter.

In Singapore, where job advertisements have hardly grown in number over the last year, the legal and compliance space has nonetheless seen rocketing growth in job advertising volumes, up 30% from the same time last year. Positions in anti-money-laundering and financial crime departments are especially in demand.

Job advertising for positions that involve cloud computing and software development grew by 35% year-on-year and firms are continuing to establish their IT shared services - some of them to do with compliance - in Malaysia. Oddly, compliance job advertising dipped slightly in that country. Robert Walters states, rather mysteriously, that this is because "companies moved from generic job advertising towards specialist recruiters to attract professionals in areas of high demand."

Asia's overall increase in job advertising volumes compared with Q1 2014 is 22%.

Robert Walters' Asia Job Index tracks advertisement volumes for executive appointments across the leading job boards and national daily newspapers.