Japan’s Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu and Germany’s Hengeler Mueller have recently advised on the US$366m acquisition of Japanese tech giant Sanyo’s semiconductor business. Morrison & Foerster advised the acquiring company, US-based ON Semiconductor.

The Japanese and German firms formed an ‘integrated team’ for the deal, Hengeler contributing a two-partner, three-associate team from Dusseldorf and Nagashima contributing four partners from Tokyo–Hiroki Inoue, Yoshimi Ohara, Kayo Takigawa and Shintaro Takai. MoFo and its Japanese partner Ito & Mitomi used Randy Laxer, Eric McCrath, Saori Nakamura and Kana Matsumura.

The deal is intended help Phoenix-based ON Semiconductor expand into the Asia-Pacific region and for Sanyo forms part of its plans to divest a number of its non-core businesses. Last year, Panasonic acquired Sanyo Electric for US$9.4bn, one of the year’s biggest M&A deals, on which Nagashima advised Panasonic. So far this year, Nagashima has advised on 18 deals worth a combined US$8bn, which is a 30% drop in values from the same period last year, according to mergermarket.

For all three law firms–whose M&A practices form a significant part of their Japanese businesses– the deal marks an important step towards regaining the deal volumes of the pre-financial crisis era. According to Thomson Reuters, the total value of M&A deals in Japan in the second quarter of this year was US$19bn – the lowest level of quarterly deal activity since the fourth quarter of 2004.

But M&A activity is doing better than last year. Inbound deals into Japan grew by a mighty 121% compared to the same period last year. More significantly, most of the acquiring companies–like ON Semiconductor–are from the US. That is undoubtedly good news for US firm Morrison & Foerster, which currently commands a 17% share of the high-technology industry M&A market.