Mitsui & Co law firm news

The US$1.2bn acquisitional financing of five gas power stations as well as a 54 kilometre gas pipeline for a group of associated companies in Mexico – all subsidiaries of Mitsui & Co and Tokyo Gas – is a sign of a resurgence in the Asia-Pacific project finance market and overseas acquisitions by Japanese utilities and trading companies.

Rajah & Tann, Stamford Law, King & Wood and Clifford Chance have acted on the first proposed takeover of a listed business trust in Singapore – a US$225m joint venture between Japan’s Mitsui & Co and Singapore Hyflux to develop a substantial water treatment business in Mainland China.

With less than two months to go before the Macallan ALB Hong Kong Law Awards 2010, the race for the best trophy haul of the night is intensifying, and five firms are finalists in more than ten categories apiece.

Several international law firms are benefitting from Japan's venture into the Middle East to lock down energy and resources. Five law firms had offices from Tokyo to Qatar on the deck in a US$3.32bn power deal – the largest electricity and water project so far in Qatar.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has advised global trading company Mitsui & Co on a joint venture with Challenger Financial Services Group, an Australian-based diversified financial services organisation, to create a Singapore-based investment management business.

Allen & Overy's Tokyo-based banking and project finance partner Aled Davies has advised the lenders, which includes key client Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), on the US$900m structured financing of the modernisation of Petrobras' Henrique Lage Refinery in São José dos Campos, São Paulo State, Brazil.

The January 1 2005 merger of Japanese heavyweight law firm Anderson Mori with capital markets firm Tomotsune & Kimura has already borne fruit at last night's inaugural Deals of the Year Awards Japan 2005.

White & Case has advised project borrower Gulf Power Generation Co. and its parent company Gulf Electric Public Co. in the US$663m project financing of a 1,468MW combined cycle gas turbine power plant to be constructed at Kaeng Khoi in Saraburi Province in Thailand.

Ashurst is advising Japanese trading company Mitsui & Co. on the US$2.3bn acquisition of the international generation portfolio of Edison Mission Energy.

Latham & Watkins represented Jupiter Telecommunications Co., Ltd. (Jupiter), in connection with a 140 billion yen (approx. $1.2 billion) secured financing, described below in Jupiter's press release. Clifford Chance also had a role on the deal.