Yohei Nakagawa advises Japanese and international clients on a wide range of complex cross-border M&A transactions.

Yohei draws on extensive experience across diverse sectors, including technology, life sciences, and media, to guide clients on:

  • Outbound and inbound mergers and acquisitions
  • Strategic investments
  • International joint ventures 

Fully bilingual in Japanese and English, he engages with clients and other parties seamlessly between both languages and brings a multicultural perspective to achieve commercial outcomes in complex cross-border M&A transactions.

Prior to joining Latham, Yohei was a partner at a leading international law firm in Tokyo, and has also practiced in the New York and Miami offices of his previous firm. 

He is a member of the New York Bar and is a registered foreign lawyer (Gaikokuho-Jimu-Bengoshi) in Japan as a member of the Dai-Ni Tokyo Bar Association.

Yohei’s experience includes advising:

M&A

  • British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI), as part of a global leading infrastructure investors consortium led by Macquarie Asset Management, on the raise of ¥150 billion to ¥300 billion (US$1-2 billion) in funds for the sale and leaseback of a portion of Rakuten Mobile’s mobile network assets
  • Nippon Life Insurance Company on its acquisition of a 21.6% equity interest in Corebridge, a retirement solutions and insurance products company, for approximately US$3.84 billion
  • Syntiant Corp. on its acquisition of the consumer MEMS Microphones business of Knowles Corporation, a provider of high-performance capacitors, radio frequency (RF) filtering products, advanced micro-acoustic microphones, and balanced armature speakers
  • Shoei Chemical, a Japan-based advanced materials manufacturer, on the acquisition of US-based Nanosys’ quantum dot (QD) business*
  • The News Lens Co., a leading Asian digital media company, on its:
    • Merger with Japan-based Mediagene*
    • Proposed de-SPAC with Blue Ocean Acquisition Corporation and listing on NASDAQ*
  • onsemi on the sale of its Niigata semiconductor fabrication facility to JS Foundry K.K.*
  • NTT in the sale of White Hat Security, a provider of application security SaaS, to Synopsys*
  • SoftBank Group and SoftBank Vision Fund on UK-headquartered multinational semiconductor and software design company Arm Limited’s proposed US$65 billion sale to NVIDIA*
  • Oji Paper on the sale of Oji Interpack, a global manufacturer of comprehensive packaging solutions, to Intertech Holdings*
  • SoftBank on the sale of Boston Dynamics, an American engineering and robotics design company, to Hyundai*
  • Mitsubishi Heavy Industries on the US$550 million carve-out acquisition of Bombardier's regional jet program*
  • Asahi Kasei Corporation on the approximately US$1 billion acquisition of Sage Automotive Interiors, a global supplier of technical textiles for the automotive industry, from Clearlake Capital Group*
  • Tayca Corporation, a TSE-listed industrial chemical products producer, on the acquisition of TRS Technologies, a privately held US piezoelectric and dielectric materials technology producer*
  • Toshiba Corporation on the US$18 billion sale of wholly owned subsidiary Toshiba Memory Corporation to a consortium led by Bain Capital*

Venture Capital

  • Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance on its various outbound strategic investments*
  • LeapFrog Investments on its preferred stock investment in the Series B financing round of bolttech, an international insurtech company*
  • JERA as lead investor on its preferred stock investment in the Series C financing round of Intertrust, a Silicon Valley-based trusted distributed computing pioneer*

*Matter handled prior to joining Latham

Bar Qualification

  • Japan (Registered Foreign Lawyer)
  • New York

Education

  • JD, UCLA School of Law, 2012
  • BS, New York University, 2008