US law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman has ramped up in Japan with the hire of local practice heads from Simmons & Simmons and Hogan Lovells.

The New York headquartered outfit, which has two offices in Asia located in Tokyo and Shanghai, has recruited Hogan Lovells' Japan projects and energy group leader Anthony Raven and Simmons' local infrastructure and energy head Simon Barrett.

The hires give the firm an office of five partners in Tokyo and a fully-fledged energy projects and infrastructure practice on the ground. The other three senior lawyers specialise in IP, finance, corporate.

Raven has worked in both London and Japan, and has 17 years of experience advising Japanese companies on transactions in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

Previously an associate at Ashurst, he focuses on upstream and downstream energy work and the development of major LNG, petrochemical and power projects.

He is the second partner to leave Hogan Lovells' Tokyo office this month; with the firm also seeing the departure of finance partner Philip Hyde, who moved to US outfit K&L Gates. Hogan Lovells now has five partners in the city out of a team of 28 lawyers.

Barrett meanwhile was one of a two-partner team at Simmons in Tokyo, working alongside country head and corporate-commercial partner Jason Daniel.

He joined the firm in 2011, also from Hogan Lovells in Japan, specialising in the development and financing of major infrastructure projects, particularly those in the transport, power and energy sectors.

As well as advising on a large number of transactions, the two partners have both done secondments to the legal department at Mitsubishi, focused on energy.

It is understood that they will co-lead the energy practice at Pillsbury in Tokyo.

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