Morrison & Foerster emerged as the most successful international law firm at ALB’s Japan Law Awards 2014 on June 17, picking up six awards across both deal and law firm categories.
The firm took home awards for the Tax Law Firm of the Year, International Deal Firm of the Year and Managing Partner of the Year, and was a joint winner of three deal category awards: Debt Market Deal of the Year, TMT Deal of the Year and M&A Deal of the Year.
All three deal awards were related to Japanese mobile operator SoftBank Corp’s acquisition of a 72 percent stake in U.S. carrier Sprint Nextel Corp for about $21.6 billion – the largest ever outbound acquisition by a Japanese company.
A Morrison & Foerster team led by Tokyo managing partner Ken Siegel advised SoftBank on the deal. The SoftBank deal, coupled with several other big-ticket transactions in the last year, would have contributed to Morrison & Foerster’s triumph in the International Deal Firm of the Year category.
“First and foremost, we have to thank our clients for engaging us on these fantastic transactions over the past few years,” said Randy Laxer, a partner at Morrison & Foerster and co-chair of the firm’s global corporate department.
“It is also a team effort. The people at Morrison & Foerster are excellent attorneys and are able to execute very complicated transactions on tight timeframes.”
The Awards also recognised individual excellence, with Morrison & Foerster’s Ken Siegel named the Managing Partner of the Year.
A lawyer on the Japan Law Awards panel of judges added: “Morrison & Foerster’s dispute resolution team here in Japan is one of the strongest among the foreign firms – they are able to handle matters in a self-sufficient way within the Tokyo office, which is often an exception rather than the norm for a dispute resolution practice by foreign firms here in Tokyo.”
The 10th annual Japan Law Awards, held at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Tokyo, recognised Japan’s best law firms, legal work and lawyers across a total of 29 categories. The evening entertained more than 200 high-profile legal luminaries, including globally renowned law firms, in-house counsel and business leaders in Japan.
The table below shows the leading winners from the night. For a full list of winners, please click here.
