Morrison & Foerster has lured leading international tax lawyer Eric Roose and his team of three from White & Case to join its Tokyo office.
Roose’s practice focuses on international tax planning and general corporate and business advisory tax work. Roose has advised international investment funds, high-technology companies, financial institutions and global real estate investment funds with respect to all tax aspects of their business and investment activities in the Asia-Pacific Region with a particular focus on Japan, China, Singapore, and the US.
Joining Roose at MoFo are of counsel Michael Shikuma and two Japanese tax specialists (zeirishi), Yasuo Igarashi and Takeo Mizutani. Ken Siegel, managing partner of the firm’s Tokyo office, said the addition of Roose and his team will knit well with the firm’s existing strengths: real estate, fund formation and general corporate, and it's relation to the latter that the firm may see the most immediate benefit.
The move is undoubtedly a coup for what is arguably one of the most successful offices of any international law firm in Tokyo. Over the past 12 months, the firm advised on US$20bn worth of transactions in the M&A space including Japan’s first ever hostile acquisition of a listed company and included other watershed transactions such as MUFG’s combination of its securities business with Morgan Stanley Japan and Toshiba’s US$2bn acquisition of flash memory manufacturer SanDisk.
