Anderson Mori & Tomotsune has opened an office in Hanoi, its second in Vietnam after Ho Chi Minh City. The Hanoi office will be led by cross-border M&A partners Yasufumi Miki and Kazuhiro Fukuda, both of who were earlier based in HCMC.

With the new office, Anderson Mori joins the ranks of other Japanese law firms that have offices in the Vietnamese capital, including Nishimura & Asahi, TMI Associates, Mori Hamada & Matsumoto and Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu.

The opening comes at a time when Vietnam is recovering rapidly from the COVID pandemic. Its GDP in 2022 grew by 8.02 percent, the highest annual increase in the last ten years. Japan is currently the third-largest source of FDI in Vietnam, and a Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) report earlier this year found that 60 percent of Japanese investors in the APAC region were keen to expand their business in the Southeast Asian country.

“The further expansion and diversification of Japanese companies' business in Vietnam” has “led to an increase in the need to hold talks with government agencies and the State Bank” based in Hanoi, AMT said in a statement.

With travel restrictions having eased in the past few months, a number of Japanese law firms have opened new overseas offices. In March, TMI Associates opened an office in Paris, while Miura & Partners significantly expanded its presence overseas by establishing new offices in Jakarta, London and San Francisco.

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