Japanese law firm Atsumi & Sakai (A&S) has hired finance specialist Taku Sonoura as a partner from Nishimura & Asahi.

Sonoura’s arrival marks the fifth lateral partner hire in Tokyo by A&S in the past 10 months. The other four are Harukuni Ito, Mitsuru Misawa and Kazuki Ishihara as partners in Tokyo, who cover emerging practice areas such as data protection, risk advisory, and environmental, social and governance (ESG); and corporate practitioner Fumiyo Doi, who joined last month and in-house role at GE Healthcare.

With more than two decades of experience, Sonoura advises on banking, structured finance, securitisation, trust, tax and tax planning, real estate finance and REIT among other things.

Having started his career at Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu in 2001, Sonoura moved to Nishimura & Asahi in 2014.