Baker & McKenzie (Gaikokuho Joint Enterprise) has advised private equity firms J-STAR Co and Potentia Capital on their joint acquisition of jinjer, one of Japan’s leading HR SaaS players. While financial terms were not recorded, news reports value the deal at $500 million.
Herbert Smith Freehills acted for Potentia on its equity funding and co-invest arrangements for the deal.
J-STAR is a Japanese private equity firm specialising in mid-cap companies while Potentia is an Australasian technology-focused private equity and growth capital firm. jinjer is a provider of multi-module, cloud-based HR SaaS solutions to enterprise customers in the Japanese market. jinjer’s SaaS platform covers the full employee lifecycle — from HR management to payroll, time and attendance, expenses, workflow, performance evaluation and talent management.
The Bakers team was led by Tokyo-based partners Tetsuo Tsujimoto and Shinichiro Kitamura. They were supported by corporate/M&A group partner Satoshi Abe, senior associate Tatsuya Niwa and associate Takahiro Toda, IP tech group partner Tsugihiro Okada, and finance and projects group counsel Takuya Wada and associate Akiko Tsuji.
The HSF team was led by partner Damien Hazard, and included Joe Fisher, Filip Gavanski and Melita Cottrell.
