Most innovative Japanese law firm: FT Innovative Lawyers Asia-Pacific Awards 2023

Tomohiro regularly serves as legal counsel to major financial institutions, trading companies, and energy companies on various projects and project finance transactions. His extensive experience with domestic projects covers a wide variety of sectors including renewable energy, IPP, grid connections, airports, water, and social infrastructure. He also has broad experience with international project financing transactions, including financing for LNG projects, mining projects, and refineries. Tomohiro is recognized as a leading project finance lawyer by Chambers Asia-Pacific, The Legal 500, IFLR1000, Best Lawyers and Who’s Who Legal. He was also named “Energy and Infrastructure Lawyer of the Year” at The Asia Legal Awards 2021.

Yasunari Sugiyama is a partner in the firm's Asset Finance Group and Agri-Food Practice Group. In the finance area, his major and unique areas include financing of movables (lease, installment purchase and secured loan), supports for overseas expansion by financial institutions, acquisition finance and domestic and cross-border real estate transactions. In particular, he has extensive experience in proposing and implementing business plans and schemes available for each target jurisdiction taking into consideration the specific civil and commercial laws and financial regulations regarding the movables and real estates in Asian, European and North and South American countries and their entity-based and geographical applicability and coverage in terms of the overseas expansion of Japanese financial institutions. Further, in the agri-food area, he aims to provide legal services for the purposes of the introduction of smart agriculture, business expansion and diversification of financing sources, development and scaling of new business such as solar-sharing and onland aquaculture business, in each case while organizing the various laws and regulations applicable to each process of value chains of the agricultural, forestry and fishery business.

Atsushi combines his experience as an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and his broad experience as a business attorney to provide solutions to tech companies and startups, including the design of transaction flows and contractual frameworks in business model creation, fundraising, various types of business collaboration with large corporations, IP strategy building, global business expansion, and strategic M&A and joint venture deals. For larger corporations, he advises on business collaboration with companies in other industry domains and on investments in and business collaborations with startups as well as on their new business model creation.

In addition to seven years' experience in Vietnam, Taro also has experience in working as in-house counsel for a major trading company. He has strong expertise in cross-border M&A/joint ventures, real estate development, labor, compliance, crisis management deals, and international transactions. In recent years, the scope of his work has expanded to include Turkey and other Middle Eastern countries. He is also a member of the Agrifood Practice Team.

Takeshi has handled many complex M&A transactions and provides sincere advice to his clients. He has extensive experience in M&A-related disputes, and is well versed in the various issues facing companies with founding family shareholders. In recent years, he has been involved in many cases involving business and human rights, impact investing, and advises companies from the perspective of sustainability. He is also actively involved in pro bono work and is one of the most experienced in Japan.

Daiki has experience and knowledge in a wide range of business areas as a finance lawyer (such as project finance, infrastructure/PPP, securitization/liquidation, real-estate structured finance, and fundraising). He has worked for and been seconded to both financial institutions and a developer (overseas business development base of a Japanese trading and investment company in Dubai). In recent years, taking advantage of such experience and his knowledge of actual business operations, he has been providing practical and detailed support and advice to clients, mainly in the fields of infrastructure and energy (including the renewable energy sector), throughout from start-up to achievement of highly challenging projects and new businesses, as well as providing legal support to resolve various issues (including disputes) that arise during operation of the projects. In addition to his involvement in projects to support financial institutions, he has a particularly strong track record of involvement in projects to support developers, sponsors, EPCs, and suppliers.