What are the most significant cases, transactions or projects that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Our team has been involved with several projects recently, in April 2023, our company, together with its banking affiliate MUFG bank, invested in the Indian fintech start-up Lentra. This was the company’s first co-investment, and it created some significant structuring issues, which arose from the complex interplay between Indian corporate law and the requirements laid out in the US Bank Holding Company Act to which we are subject.

In January 2023, we established our third fund, the Garuda Fund, a US$100m Indonesia-focused fund. This fund uses a novel structure that combines both Japanese limited partnerships and Japanese ‘dyadic’ partnerships, which to our knowledge is unprecedented.

As the corporate venture capital arm of MUFG, we are constantly looking for opportunities to collaborate between the start-ups we invest in and MUFG Bank or any other MUFG Group company. A success story in this regard is our investment in the Israeli start-up Liquidity Capital. This has established the joint venture fund, Mars Growth Capital, which provides debt financing to startups. The success and deepening of this collaboration have led MUFG Bank to recently make a significant investment in Liquidity Capital.

Could you share an example of a time when your team came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

By better understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each of the firms we work with, we have become smarter in our selection of outside counsel, and we choose the best firm for each case. This has helped to keep our legal fees under control.

We have standardised some basic agreements, for example NDAs, which has allowed us to better facilitate discussions between the business teams and the start-ups. We also created a document management protocol to ensure consistent storage of key documents for each case.

We have coordinated closely with MUFG Bank’s in-house team to ensure that each of our investments is made in compliance with US banking regulatory requirements. In the past, the investment process has been slow due to inadequate communication channels with our in-house team, this can be detrimental in the venture capital world where time is of the essence.

How do you suggest in-house lawyers build strong relationships with business partners?

In-house lawyers should get to really know the business team. Talk to them, listen to them, understand their values, and what they care about. You should also have fun with them over dinner, drinks, and social events!