Tokyo-based Mori Hamada & Matsumoto has announced plans to launch one new international office in Myanmar and a new domestic one in Osaka.
The Japanese law firm will open an office in Yangon after the completion of a formal set-up process with the Myanmar government. No specific date was given for the launch.
Finance and corporate partner Takeshi Mukawa, currently based in Singapore, will split his time between that office and Yangon. One associate will also be stationed in Yangon full-time.
The move by Mori Hamada follows that of fellow Japanese firm Nishimura & Asahi, which launched an office in Yangon last May. Japanese law firms, like many of their domestic clients, have sought growth in Southeast Asia as an alternative to slowness at home. All of Tokyo’s Big Four corporate firms—Mori Hamada, Nishimura, Anderson Mori & Tomotsune and Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu—have opened Singapore offices in the past two years.
Mori Hamada also has overseas offices in Beijing and Shanghai.
In a statement, the firm said it was launching in Osaka in order to better service clients located there. Partner Takuya Eguchi is relocating from Tokyo to lead the new office. He will advise on mergers and acquisitions, corporate issues, intellectual property and dispute resolution matters, among others.
Japanese law bars legal partnerships from having more than one office in Japan, so the Osaka office will work as a branch of the legal professional corporation that Mori Hamada set up when it opened an office in Fukuoka last year.*
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*Correction, 1/23/14: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Mori Hamada would set up a legal professional corporation in Osaka so that it could comply with a Japanese law that bars legal partnerships from having more than one office in Japan. In fact, the firm had already done so in Fukuoka last year. We regret the error.
