The Tokyo office of Morrison & Foerster and Ito & Mitomi represented Thomson SA in its $110 million acquisition of Canopus, a developer of high-performance video encoding/decoding technology based in Kobe, Japan.  In the transaction, Thomson acquired a 33-1/3% interest in Canopus from the company's chairman and founder and members of his immediate family, and conducted a cash tender offer for the company's remaining publicly traded shares.  Settlement of the tender offer commenced on January 24, 2006.  Including the shares purchased in the private transaction, Thomson’s ownership of Canopus will be 94.31% when settlement is completed.

The Morrison & Foerster team was led by Tokyo partner Jay Ponazecki, and the Ito & Mitomi team was led by Tokyo partners Fuyuo Mitomi and Ryugo Yoshimura.  

Please see the link below For Thomson’s more detailed press release describing the transaction, please click here.