- Awards
The Nikkei Legal Rankings 2025
Several Nishimura & Asahi lawyers were named as Nikkei’s Most Successful Lawyers in 2025 in their respective practice areas.
Most notably, partner Yo Ota secured the top spot in the general corporate law category for the fourth consecutive year. This recognition reflects Yo’s exemplary legal advisory, including unsolicited acquisitions.
The Nikkei, formally known as Nihon Keizai Shimbun, is a flagship publication of Nikkei, Inc. It is of the world's largest financial newspapers. Most Successful Lawyers is an annual survey ranking of Japan’s most exceptional lawyers across five categories. The results are based on votes cast by legal personnel from over 300 companies and 244 private practice lawyers. Each voting participant selects two lawyers who stand out for their exceptional legal services in each practice category.
This distinguished achievement underpins Nishimura & Asahi’s commitment to providing our clients with seamless, high-quality legal services.
Ranking - Company Choice
General Corporate Law
Yo Ota (1st), Kazuhiro Takei (8th)
AI Governance
Noriya Ishikawa (2nd)
Compliance
Hiroshi Kimeda (2nd)
Cross-border M&A
Yo Ota (2nd)
Comprehensive Ranking
General Corporate Law
Yo Ota (1st), Kazuhiro Takei (13th)
People
Mr. Ota has a wealth of practical international and domestic legal experience, focusing on the areas of hostile takeovers, shareholder activism, M&A transactions (including cross-border deals), corporate governance and other corporate matters, domestic/international taxation, and personal information/data protection, and works on a wide range of corporate legal affairs cases. In the NIKKEI’s "Most Successful Lawyers" awards he was ranked in the corporate law category (1st) and the tax category (2nd) in 2024; in the corporate law category (1st) and the M&A category (1st) in 2023; and in the corporate law category (1st) in 2022. In addition, he dedicates himself to research and writing activities that bridge academia and legal practice on cutting-edge issues related to the Companies Act, the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, tax law, the Act on the Protection of Personal Information, etc. He has edited and authored many books and papers, such as "Introduction to Corporate Governance" (Iwanami Shinsho), "Hostile Takeovers and Activists" (Iwanami Shinsho), “Schemes and Tax Issues of M&A and Corporate Restructuring, 4th Ed.”, “Corpus Juris M&A - Completely Revised Edition (first volume) (second volume)”, “Handbook on Share Options (Fifth Edition)”, “Corpus Juris Series - Personal Information Protection Legislation (Global)”, “Handbook on Class Shares”, etc.
Mr. Kimeda’s main areas of practice are Corporate Crisis Management and Litigation. As for Corporate Crisis Management, he has extensive experience in corporate scandal cases, including window-dressing, misrepresentation of financial statements, insider trading, antitrust (bid rigging, price cartels, and abuse of dominant position), product defects, misleading representations of products, divulging confidential information, bribery, political funding, money laundering, breach of industrial regulations, and factory accidents. In these types of cases he has specific expertise on the issues of internal investigations, third party committee investigations, defending against criminal and administrative investigations, public relations, rebuilding compliance systems, reforming corporate governance, and handling the related civil litigation. He also serves as an outside whistleblower hotline channel for a number of companies. As for litigation, he has considerable experience in tax disputes, shareholders disputes, and other types of corporate litigation. He is the author of numerous legal articles and has also been involved in the process of making laws and regulations. He has been recognized as one of the “Most successful lawyers” by the NIKKEI for the last several years as below.
2023 Corporate Crisis Management category 1st
2021 Corporate Crisis Management category 1st
2020 Corporate Crisis Management category 1st
2018 Corporate Crisis Management category 2nd
2014 Corporate Crisis Management category 2nd
2011 Corporate Crisis Management category 3rd
2024 Corporate Legal Affairs category 17th
2022 Corporate Legal Affairs category 9th
2016 Corporate Legal Affairs category 10th
2015 Corporate Legal Affairs category 8th
2013 Corporate Legal Affairs category 2nd
2012 Corporate Legal Affairs category 4th
Noriya ISHIKAWA
- Partner
- Frankfurt / Düsseldorf
Noriya advises national and international clients from various industries, with a focus on multi-national data protection law projects, such as drafting policy, data transfer agreements and out-sourcing agreements, IT compliance questions, and data breach issues. Since he has experience working with local counsel in more than 80 jurisdictions, he has in depth knowledge of the similarities and differences among data protection laws in many jurisdictions. He can provide his advice taking into account the difference of Japanese laws and other main data protection laws such as the GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL (China).
Kazuhiro Takei has extensive expertise representing Japanese public companies on a variety of matters, including M&A, corporate governance and digital transformation, corporate law, securities law, shareholders meeting, consumer law, and tax law.