Latham & Watkins Gaikokuho Joint Enterprise

The firm: Latham & Watkins is a leading international law firm serving multinational companies, start-ups, investment banks, private equity funds, venture capital firms, sovereign wealth funds, governments and other organisations. The firm’s globally integrated platform spans Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the US, and consists of internationally recognised practices across a wide spectrum of transactional, litigation, corporate and regulatory areas. Latham attorneys offer unrivalled legal resources and strategic commercial thinking to provide clients with innovative solutions to complex commercial matters.

Asia practice: Businesses and investors seeking innovative solutions to their most complex corporate, financial, regulatory and litigation challenges turn to Latham in Asia for strategic thinking and experienced counsel. Latham has extensive experience advising on the international aspects of a broad range of corporate and finance transactions for clients across the region, notably Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. With more than 150 lawyers operating from six offices in Asia, Latham provides clients in the region and clients looking to do business in Asia with expert advice under US, English, Hong Kong, Japanese and Singapore law. Latham’s deep roots in the financial and economic markets in the region are further strengthened by the firm’s local language capabilities.

Latham continues to receive awards and acclaim from a number of leading financial and legal publications for landmark and precedent-setting deals.

Areas of practice: The firm’s Asia practice has received considerable market recognition for its involvement in many of the most important single-country and in-region, inbound and outbound cross-border transactions. The team has extensive expertise across numerous practices, including: project development and finance (particularly in the areas of infrastructure, energy and natural resources); banking and acquisition finance; M&A; private equity; restructurings; privatisations; debt and equity capital markets; general company representation; foreign direct investment; commercial litigation and arbitration (with a particular focus on contentious insolvencies, securities and shareholder disputes); white-collar and government investigations; antitrust and competition; and technology, media and commercial transactions.

With a presence in Japan for more than 20 years, Latham & Watkins has developed a strong, fully integrated team of Bengoshi and registered foreign lawyers (with dual-language capabilities) with a thorough understanding of the nature of the business practices and objectives affecting clients in Japan and international clients with Japanese interests. The combination of experience and expertise working on deals and matters of all sizes in a wide range of industry sectors, has enabled the practice to provide effective and strategic legal advice in the areas of project development and finance; M&A; joint ventures and strategic alliances; employment; capital markets; banking; structured finance; intellectual property; antitrust and competition; international dispute resolution; arbitration; telecommunications; emerging companies; and public company representation. Attorneys in the Tokyo office have been involved in a number of transactions and cases that are the largest or first of their kind, and are consistently recognised as leading lawyers in numerous practice areas.