The Middle East is the home of some of the world’s leading oil exporting countries, and Japan is highly dependent upon oil imports from the Middle East.  The Middle Eastern countries have developed their infrastructure and industries by utilizing their enormous oil revenues and importing technologies and technological know-how from Western and Asian countries including Japan.  As the population of the Middle East rapidly increases, the area is becoming more attractive as a consumer market.  On the other hand, the situation in the Middle East is ever changing and involves geopolitically complicated issues, as seen with the recent lifting of economic sanctions on Iran resulting from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreed in July 2015.

With respect to matters involving Middle Eastern countries that have a high potential as consumer markets as well as the complicated issues mentioned above, we provide a wide variety of strategic legal services to our clients, including public sector agencies and private institutions both on a domestic and overseas basis.

The related business sectors include energy and resources, construction, finance, real estate, the medical and pharmaceutical industry, and other types of manufacturing, and the distribution of products and the provision of services.

The fields covered by our legal services vary, ranging from transactional matters (including M&A deals, Islamic or other conventional types of financial transactions, and distributorship agreements), regulatory matters (including foreign investment, agency regulations, economic sanctions and export control), dispute resolution matters (including litigation and arbitration cases, cases under the investment treaties), and general research projects regarding the legal regimes and practices in the Middle East.

Our Middle-East practice team has published many books and articles, including the “Business Law Guidebook of Saudi Arabia” in 2009, “Business Law Guidebook of the Middle Eastern Countries” in 2010, “Legal Practice in the Middle Eastern Countries and the Civil Code of the UAE” in 2013, and “Business Law and Practice in the Islamic Area” in 2014.  In order to update the books and articles mentioned above, in March 2015, the team published the “Business Law Guidebook of the Middle Eastern Countries”, which widely covers the Middle Eastern area.  In addition, our team published the “Business Law Guidebook of Iran” in March 2016, to provide our clients with up-to-date information on Iran, which has been attracting increasing attention following the lifting of economic sanction in January 2016.