About

Dual-qualified in both Japan (2000) and New York (2006), Yoshiaki Sakurai’s legal career began with Nishimura & Asahi, where he practiced wide variety of areas including Corporate, M&A, Litigation and Corporate Governance for over a decade before moving to the in-house legal world with Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities in 2011. A key fixture of the in-house legal team there until 2018 focusing on M&A, Capital Markets as well as Litigation and regulatory affairs facing with the relevant regulators, Sakurai then took a change in direction by taking on a role with e-commerce platform Mercari in 2018, in a move which emphasised his adaptability to Japanese mega-IT and Fintech company with his demonstrated managerial capability. Since 2020, Sakurai has been in place with historic Japanese listed medical device brand Olympus. As head of Legal for Japan he oversees a wide range of responsibilities in a demanding and highly competitive and regulated industry including divesture of certain key businesses and regulatory affairs as well as corporate secretary role added recently to his responsibility.