Seven & i Holdings Co., Ltd. - Transfer of a Majority Interest in Supermarket Business to Bain Capital

Nobuya has extensive experience supporting our clients in M&A transactions and other corporate matters, including general shareholders meetings, shareholder activism and corporate governance issues. In the M&A field, Nobuya represents our corporate clients in mergers, corporate reorganizations, privatization transactions and business divestures. He is also active in cross-border transactions, both in in-out and out-in transactions.

Suguru Sato has broad experience and expertise in handling domestic M&A transactions between listed companies, investments in startup companies, acquisitions by private equity funds, going private transactions through tender offer, and cross-border transactions, including strategy planning, structuring, and execution. He gained experience on secondment to two major corporations and had the opportunity to be involved in their internal decision making regarding investments in closed companies and capital and business alliances. Based on this experience, he is able to support his clients in the execution of their transactions, including internal decision making, from a client-friendly viewpoint. He also has substantial experience in advising on shareholder meetings, post-merger integrations, and domestic and cross-border general corporate transactions． Suguru Sato strives to provide his clients with flexible and prompt legal services in line with their particular needs.

He has handled mainly China's legal affairs for more than 20 years, and has a wealth of experience advising numerous Japanese companies investing in China, Chinese-related M&As, corporate restructuring and withdrawal, crisis management, intellectual property rights, labor, litigation and disputes, and Chinese companies' investment projects in Japan. Having spent more than 10 years in Shanghai, China he has earned the trust of his clients thanks to his ability to solve problems in the field. He has written numerous books, papers, and lectures in the fields of Chinese legal affairs and intellectual property.

Ing-Chian is a lead partner of our Taiwan practice group. As one of the few Taiwanese lawyers based in Japan, she handles a wide variety of matters for clients that conduct business in relation to Taiwan, such as M&A, finance, real estate, competition law/antitrust law, IP, and other international legal matters.
Notably, she was the first Taiwanese lawyer ever to be registered as a Gaikokuho-Jimu-Bengoshi (Registered Foreign Lawyer in Japan) qualified to practice law in Taiwan. She is based in Japan, but serves as a Co-Representative of our Taipei office, and provides our Japanese and Taiwanese clients with seamless, timely legal support for both their inbound and outbound legal needs.

Having worked as a partner in a prestigious law firm in China for about 3 years, in September 2010, Cuiping decided to come to Japan and work as one of the leaders of our China Practice Team, so as to take a step closer to her clients willing to expand their business globally and to help resolve their foreign legal issues more timely and actively. As an international lawyer specialized in the legal and business practice of both China and Japan, she has participated in plenty of investment and M&A projects between China and Japan using her fluent Chinese and Japanese. She also helps her clients to expand their business both domestically and globally using her strong social network established via numerous cross-border projects. Besides general corporate practice and corporate governance, she also devotes herself to cutting-edge legal issues such as the protection of data or personal information, presents creative resolutions to her clients, and provides them with continuous support on their overseas business. She also brings the latest legal news regarding China and Japan to her clients proactively not only by publishing articles, but also by attending multiple business seminars as a speaker.