Miura & Partners is set to open an office in Hong Kong, as the Japanese firm continues to aggressively push for international growth. 

The office, set to open this summer, will be the firm’s eighth internationally and follows it launching operations in Seattle, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok in recent months. 

The firm pointed to Hong Kong’s status as a business hub for the Asia region and its role in facilitating investment between Japan and mainland China and Taiwan. 

“By establishing our Hong Kong office, we can provide seamless support for both inbound and outbound cases involving companies across the region,” the firm said. 

The firm has hired Junko Shiokawa as a partner from offshore firm Conyers Dill & Pearman to lead the new office alongside existing Miura partner Norika Yuasa, a key member of the firm’s China practice whose experience spans M&A, competition, disputes and real estate. Shiokawa brings experience in the Hong Kong market and specialises in investment funds, cross-border transactions and dispute resolution. 

Miura & Partners has grown to around 100 lawyers since it was founded in 2019 by former Big Four Japanese firm Mori Hamada partner Ryota Miura. The firm, which has five offices in its home country, kickstarted its international growth in 2023 when it set up shop in London, Jakarta and Vietnam. The same year it also entered the US after forming an alliance with San Francisco-based Yorozu Law Group, which had been providing legal services to Japanese companies and their US subsidiaries for more than 20 years. 

The firm opened its second US office in Seattle in February after absorbing local boutique Baxter Law International, in a bid to tap into work from the growing number of Japanese companies entering the US market to do business in Seattle and California. The firm’s US offices also support American companies entering the Japanese market, providing legal advice on M&A, tax and employment matters, the firm said. 

Around the same time the firm launched operations in Kuala Lumpur after forming a strategic alliance with 12-lawyer Malaysian boutique Donovan & Ho, which specialises in M&A, dispute resolution and employment law, and in Bangkok, where the firm has a small team of Thai lawyers who are supervised by Miura’s Asia practice head Ryoichi Inoue. 

The offices collaborate with Miura & Partners’ business consulting arm, M&P Asia Corporation, to provide a “one-stop service” for the legal, tax and accounting needs of Japanese companies doing M&A in Malaysia and Thailand. They also provide advice on new business expansion, fraud investigations and dispute resolution.

Miura & Partners’ Hong Kong move comes just a few months after Nishimura & Asahi became the first major Japanese law firm to open an office there, after receiving approval from the Hong Kong Law Society. Anderson Mori & Tomotsune, another of Japan’s Big Four, has an association in Hong Kong through Nakamura & Partners. 

Nishimura also expanded its European network earlier this year, adding bases in London and Brussels to the offices in Frankfurt and Dusseldorf it opened in 2020.