What are the key projects that you have been involved in over the past twelve months?

Among our most significant current undertakings is the structuring of a private debt fund through a joint venture with a domestic megabank, with the aim of contributing to the growth of Japan’s leveraged buyout market. This represents the first initiative of its kind in Japan — a commingled fund formed between an independent asset manager and a megabank — and is designed to generate powerful synergies by combining Neuberger’s North American private debt investment platform, together with its established track record and portfolio management expertise, our fund formation and operational capabilities and our deep relationships with buyout sponsors, with the megabank’s origination strength in LBO senior lending. We are advancing the development of the fund structure, the preparation of transaction documentation and the execution of the overall initiative. We are in close coordination with external legal, accounting and tax advisors, as well as all relevant internal departments, both domestic and international, while giving careful consideration to Japanese law and regulation, tax requirements, market practice and applicable banking regulations.

Most recently, we successfully launched what became Japan’s first publicly offered investment trust providing retail investors with substantive exposure to global private equity, structured by embedding a Neuberger foreign investment fund. Balancing the inherently illiquid nature of the underlying assets against the product requirement of monthly liquidity presented a fundamental structural challenge. Working in close collaboration with external advisors and internal stakeholders, and following advance consultations with the relevant regulatory authorities, we designed a product structure and prepared disclosure documentation in full compliance with the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act and the rules of the Investment Trusts Association of Japan.

Have you had any experiences during your career as a lawyer that stand out as particularly unique or interesting?

These pioneering initiatives are a natural outgrowth of Neuberger’s Japan office operating with a clear purpose: to respond to the needs of Japanese investors and to bring genuine, differentiated value to the domestic asset management market. In this regard, our work establishing a fund-of-funds-type global private fund investment platform for Japanese public pension funds — itself a first-of-its-kind transaction in Japan — has been a particularly formative experience. With no established precedent or domestic reference point to draw upon, the transaction required navigating the intersection, and at times the conflict, of multiple legal systems, market standards, and commercial practices across jurisdictions including the United States, the Cayman Islands, and Japan. The process of overcoming the constraint of having “no precedent” through ingenuity and deep specialist knowledge — in an environment where different regulatory frameworks, commercial norms and stakeholder interests converge — represents, for me, the very essence of what makes in-house legal practice genuinely rewarding. When one is able to accurately assess legal risk while presenting actionable solutions that advance business objectives, it is in those moments that legal truly functions as a genuine partner to the business.

What are the most important attributes for a modern in-house counsel to possess?

In this sense, the most critical quality required of in-house counsel — and above all of a general counsel — is the capacity to maintain simultaneously a command of the big picture and a meticulous attention to detail. It is essential to keep sight of the broader significance of a transaction in the market and its implications for investors and stakeholders, while remaining alert to the granular nuances of applicable law, tax treatment and operational execution. Equally indispensable in today’s in-house legal function is the role of strategic facilitator: one who possesses a deep understanding of the gaps between overseas and Japanese legal systems and market practice and who is able to bridge them effectively. I firmly believe that the fundamental value of the modern in-house lawyer lies in the commitment to building genuine partnerships with teams across borders and functions, forging the most sound and workable solutions at the intersection of business objectives and legal constraints.