(Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)Fifth Partner Leaves Paul Hastings in Asia This Year
Eiji Kobayashi joins Greenberg Traurig as a partner. So far this year, four other partners in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai left Paul Hastings.
November 27, 2019 at 11:15 AM
3 minute read
Tokyo partner Eiji Kobayashi has left Paul Hastings after less than two years – the fifth partner to leave the firm across Asia so far this year.
Kobayashi joins Greenberg Traurig as a partner. He specialises in cross-border mergers and acquisitions as well as regulatory and investigation matters in the technology, automobile, real estate, and life sciences sectors.
Kobayashi joined Paul Hastings in January of 2018. Previously, he was a partner and Japan corporate practice leader at Norton Rose Fulbright, and partner and cross-border transactions group leader at leading Japanese firm Nishimura & Asahi.
In addition to Kobayashi, Greenberg Traurig has three other partners in Tokyo: M&A and capital markets lawyer Koji Ishikawa, disputes specialist Yuji Ogiwara, and finance specialist Koichiro Ohashi. Ishikawa heads the Tokyo office while Ogiwara and Ohashi chair the Japan practice.
The lateral move is the latest in the Japanese capital fuelled by the rise of M&A work. In October, M&A partners in Tokyo told Law.com's The Asian Lawyer that the past few years have been the busiest for deals – both outbound and inbound – in decades. The trend is driven by Japanese companies looking abroad for growth in a stagnant domestic economy and also becoming more open to divesting non-core assets.
Meanwhile, the departure of Kobayashi leaves Paul Hastings with only two partners in Tokyo: corporate lawyer Toshiyuki Arai and disputes specialist Hiroyuki Hagiwara. Arai serves as Tokyo office chair.
Elsewhere in Asia, Paul Hastings lost four other partners this year. In Hong Kong, corporate partners Bretton King relocated to Miami to move in-house at an investment firm founded by a client, and Bonnie Yung joined Big Four accounting firm EY's affiliated Hong Kong law firm, LC Lawyers. Both of Paul Hastings' chief representatives of the Shanghai and Beijing offices, Haiyan Tang and Nan Li, also left: Tang joined Chinese private equity firm CBC Group while Li joined Chinese firm Tian Yuan Law Firm's Hong Kong office.
Neither Paul Hastings nor Greenberg Traurig immediately responded to a request for comment.
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