21 ASIAN LEGAL BUSINESS – MARCH 2024 WWW.LEGALBUSINESSONLINE.COM CROSS-BORDER INVESTMENT nuanced and culturally sensitive legal solutions,” Paul says. MORE WORK FOR LAWYERS This growing economic collaboration has seen a boom in the legal sector across both countries, as law firms and lawyers optimise to take larger chunks of work in the Indo-Japan corridor. And everybody has a role to play, says Rudra Kumar Pandey, a partner at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co who heads the firm’s Japan desk. “In terms of Japanese investments in India, often, large-scale, multinational entities in Japan work directly and more closely with Indian lawyers for advisory and transaction-related assistance for their investment in India. On the other hand, certain small-scale or niche Japanese entities, typically, hire Japanese lawyers first, who in turn engage and work in tandem with Indian lawyers on the transaction,” Pandey says. “While Indian lawyers are heavily involved in transactions pertaining to proposed investments from Japanese entities into India, the role of Japanese lawyers is also crucial in providing their insights on the best practices and policies that would be more feasible and would suitably cater to the specific requirements and preferences of the Japanese entities. Many Japanese lawyers, through their constant engagement with Indian lawyers, have also gained sufficient understanding and expertise of transactions in India,” he adds. Although, with increased client sophistication and measures taken by law firms to understand language and culture better, things are changing. “The happy change is to increasingly see Japanese companies wanting to engage directly with Indian law firms rather than through intermediary law firms in their home jurisdiction,” Jejurkar says. Legal experts in India say increasing investments has brought more work on clarifications under the foreign exchange laws, investment policies from Japanese clients. “With significant liberalisation of India’s foreign investment policy in sectors such as defence, insurance, telecommunications, and pharmaceuticals etc., the foreign exchange laws, including the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 read with its rules and regulations and the consolidated FDI policy of 2020 have gained traction,” says Pandey. “The upsurge in strategic transactions between the Japanese and Indian entities have brought various laws to the frontage, such as antitrust law, competition law, securities law, tax law, real estate law, data privacy and bankruptcy and insolvency law, amongst others. Further, in light of increased attention of Japanese entities towards compliance, and increase in transactions involving listed companies in India, in particular, antitrust law, securities law, anti-corruption law and compliance-related aspects of laws have gained significant traction in matters involving Japanese investments in India, in light of their complex procedural requirements,” adds Pandey. But apart from these traditional practice areas, lawyers are also seeing a new kind of demand from the digital market. “Amongst other drivers discussed above, collaborations concerning digital ICT technologies and the setting up of the first India-Japan startup hub in Bengaluru are not only strengthening ties between the two nations but also paving the way for novel areas of legal practice POWER COUPLE
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