Allen & Overy is pleased to announce the election of Nick Wall as a partner in its Tokyo Corporate and M&A practice. Nick joins A&O from Freshfields where he has spent the past 11 years primarily advising on inbound and outbound M&A transactions for international and Japanese clients. Nick has also spent time on secondment in Freshfields’ London office doing international M&A work.
With extensive experience in public and private M&A, joint ventures, capital markets issuances, anti-trust and regulatory issues and commercial contracts, Nick is a welcome addition to the A&O team which has recently advised on some of Japan’s highest profile deals including The Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ’s USD5.31bn acquisition of a 72 per cent. stake in Thailand’s Bank of Ayudhya; Dai Ichi Life’s USD337m acquisition of a stake in Indonesia’s PT Panin Life; and Hitachi’s successful bid for Horizon Power and its UK nuclear sites from E.ON and RWE.
A graduate of Hitotsubashi University`s faculty of law, Nick is fluent in Japanese which builds out further the firm’s Japanese speaking M&A capability. Nick is a registered foreign lawyer in Japan and member of the Daini Tokyo Bar Association, licensed to practice English law in Japan.
Commenting on the appointment Tokyo partner Simon Black said: “We are delighted to have Nick join us at an exciting time for us and our clients in Japan. The prospects for Japanese cross-border M&A remain strong. Our Japanese clients have never been more active across our network and we are seeing some rebound of inbound M&A. Nick’s outstanding reputation with clients, his language capability and his commitment to living and working in Japan over the long term are all a great boost to our client offering.”
Allen & Overy celebrated its 25th anniversary in Japan last year. The firm placed seventh in Thomson Reuters’ Japan M&A league tables with USD13.2bn in announced deals for 2013 and placed No.1 globally in the Bloomberg tables for cross-border M&A by volume of deals. Worldwide, the firm has an extensive footprint with 43 offices across 30 countries including 11 offices in Asia Pacific.
