DEPARTMENT PROFILE

Nishimura & Asahi

Real Estate

3 ranked lawyers

Band 1

Japan

Asia-Pacific 2022 View ranking table

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What the team is known for

Nishimura & Asahi has a high-profile team regularly engaged by international and domestic institutions in large-scale acquisitions and developments of prime property. Continues to act on financings and various transactions on behalf of REITs. Regularly advises Japanese real estate companies on transactions across North and South-East Asia. Experienced in acting as the arranger's counsel on big-ticket real estate acquisitions and also assists foreign investors with their real estate acquisitions in Japan. Its key clients include Tokyu Land Corporation, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and Kajima Corporation.

Strengths

Clients praise the team's "excellent performance," and appreciate its ability to be "very rational during negotiations."

A further interviewee reports: "Nishimura & Asahi is an outstanding firm with wide experience of real estate and finance. Their solutions are varied and very innovative to meet client needs."

Work highlights

Nishimura & Asahi advised ITOCHU corporation on the redevelopment of the Toshimaen, Tokyo amusement park.

Notable practitioners

Hiroshi Niinomi enjoys numerous endorsements from market sources and remains a popular choice among banks, J-REITs and investment firms looking to acquire and invest in projects and assets in Japan. A client reports: "He is quite flexible in his thinking and well balanced between having a solid base of legal knowledge and understanding business practices in the real world. He is really excellent in quickly responding to clients' needs."

Norio Maeda is sought after for his expertise on major real estate transactions. He represents an impressive roster of international investors and leading financial institutions with their acquisitions and investments in Japanese real estate. One satisfied client appreciates his support as "he helps us tremendously," adding: "His ability to give us helpful advice and to explain difficult concepts to foreign investors made quite an impression on us. We are grateful for his and his team’s patience in negotiations with tough counterparties."

Yoshiaki Ikeda maintains a strong reputation among peers for his transactional real estate practice. His recent activity includes advising J-REITs and international investors on their acquisitions of logistics portfolios.

Department Information

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Overview

We are well-known for our capability to provide commercially suitable solutions. We believe that this capability is preferred by our clients including various foreign players.

Compared to other large firms in the Japanese market who have expertise mainly only in real-estate finance, we also have expertise in real estate development. Our clients include major Japanese developers such as Mitsubishi Estate Co., Ltd. and Tokyu Land Corporation, which indicates their appreciation of our above-mentioned expertise.

Our real estate practice also covers real-estate finance. Expertise in real-estate finance is one of our core strengths. Our real estate securitization/structured finance practice has been the leader in Japan since the first real estate securitization in the Japanese market that our group created in the late 1990s. All three Japanese megabanks are our long-standing clients. We continue to work on the most challenging Japanese real estate structured financing transactions with the country’s major financial institutions and investment banks (whether domestic or foreign) as our clients.