Morrison & Foerster's Tokyo office is active in advising clients on a wide range of transactional and other antitrust issues, working closely with our seasoned antitrust teams in Brussels, Beijing and Washington, D.C. to provide coordinated global advice. Kei Amemiya, who joined our firm after several years with the Japan Fair Trade Commission, provides specials insight into Japanese competition law and regulatory issues.
As a global law firm, Morrison & Foerster’s attorneys including our Tokyo-based attorneys, regularly represent clients in matters before U.S. federal and state antitrust enforcement agencies, including the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, the FTC, and state attorneys general. We are also experienced at representing clients before non-U.S. regulatory bodies, such as the European Commission and the Japan Fair Trade Commission. Among the clients represented by the firm in matters involving multi-jurisdictional antitrust/competition law issues are Fujitsu, Hitachi, Intel, Matsushita, Thomson and Toshiba.
Our Tokyo attorneys also provide counseling to clients regarding pricing policies, intellectual property licensing, distribution arrangements, trade associations, unfair trade and deceptive advertising issues, and antitrust compliance programs.
Recent transactions on which we have provided antitrust advice include:
- Fujitsu’s $330 million sale of its hard disk drive business to Toshiba. We represented both Toshiba and Fujitsu in the sale of Fujitsu's hard disk drive business, with operations in Japan and in more than a dozen other countries, to Toshiba.
- TDK’s $350 million acquisition of Alps hard disk drive head business. We represented TDK in its purchase of Alps’ business for the development, commercialization and manufacture of heads for hard disk drives for $350 million.
- Fuji Electric’s joint venture with Schneider. We represented Fuji Electric and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Fuji Electric Components & Systems, in their joint venture with Schneider to combine the parties’ businesses for the development, manufacture and sale of electrical distribution and industrial control equipment in Japan, including more than 3,000 employees and annual revenues of over ¥70 billion.
- Nomura Principal Finance's $870 million MBO of Tsubaki Nakashima. We represented Nomura Principal Finance in its $870 million management buyout of Tsubaki Nakashima, a Japan-based precision ball bearing manufacturer.
- Fujitsu’s sale of its interest in Fujitsu Hitachi Plasma Display. We represented Fujitsu and Hitachi in Fujitsu's sale to Hitachi of its 30% interest in Fujitsu Hitachi Plasma Display, a leading manufacturer of plasma display panels.
- Fujisawa’s $7.6 billion merger with Yamanouchi. We represented both Fujisawa and Yamanouchi in the international aspects of the $7.6 billion worldwide merger of their operations, including international antitrust clearance for the merger in the U.S., South America and Asia. The merger integrated Japan’s 2nd and 11th largest pharmaceutical companies to create Astellas, one of Japan's three largest pharmaceutical companies, and was the largest pharmaceutical merger in Japan to date at the time of closing.
- Hitachi’s $2 billion acquisition of IBM’s hard disk drive business. We represented Hitachi in its $2 billion acquisition of IBM’s hard disk drive business (with over 20,000 employees in 8 countries), including in the worldwide antitrust review of the transaction in the U.S., EU, South America and Asia.
- TDK’s $125 million acquisition of a controlling interest in Magnecomp. We represented TDK in its $125 million acquisition of a 74.3% interest in Magnecomp Precision, a Thai maker of components for hard disk drives.
- Toshiba’s joint venture with Canon. We represented Toshiba in the international antitrust aspects of its $2 billion SED flat-display panel joint venture with Canon.
- Fujitsu’s flash memory joint venture with Advance Micro Devices. We represented Fujitsu in the worldwide antitrust review of the restructuring and expansion of its long-standing flash memory joint venture with AMD.
- Toshiba’s LCD joint venture with Matsushita. We represented Toshiba and Matsushita in the international antitrust aspects of their global joint venture to combine their LCD businesses.
- Fujitsu’s global alliance with NCR. We represented Fujitsu in the formation of its global strategic alliance with NCR to design, develop, manufacture and supply next-generation automated teller machines and cash dispensers.
- Technicolor’s acquisition of Panasonic Disc Service Corporation. We represented Technicolor, a division of Thomson S.A., in its acquisition of Panasonic Disc Service Corporation, a subsidiary of Matsushita specializing in DVD and CD replication.
- ITOCHU and Marubeni Corporation in the merger of their steel businesses. We represented ITOCHU and Marubeni in the international aspects of the global merger of their steel fabrication and distribution businesses.