30 July, 2015
Baker & McKenzie recently advised Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Company (hereafter referred to as "Meiji Yasuda Life") on its acquisition of 100 percent of the outstanding shares of StanCorp Financial Group, Inc.(likewise "StanCorp"), a publicly-listed US life insurance group on the New York Stock Exchange. The total transaction value of this acquisition is about USD 4.997 billion (approximately JPY 624 billion), and is one of the biggest acquisitions of an overseas corporation by a Japanese insurance company.
Meiji Yasuda Life, founded in 1881 and headquartered in Tokyo, is ranked the 21st largest life insurance company in the world and operates in Japan, the US, China, Indonesia, Thailand, and Poland. It has, since 1976, when it became the first Japanese life insurer to enter the US market, accumulated almost 40 years of experience there. StanCorp, founded in 1906 and headquartered in Portland, Oregon, is an insurance company and provides a variety of financial services including group vision insurance, absence management services, retirement plans products and services, and individual annuities, and is one of the top US life insurance companies, particularly in the area of group insurance.
Baker & McKenzie's team was led by Jiro Toyokawa in Tokyo and Craig Roeder in Chicago, and also involved partners Kiyoshi Endo (Tokyo), Toshio Ibaraki (Tokyo), Jakub Teply (Chicago), Maura Ann McBreen (Chicago) and Thomas May (New York), as well as associates Yasutaka Orihara (Tokyo), Hiroyuki Hamai (Tokyo), Satoshi Abe (Tokyo), Ryan Ferris (Chicago) and Michael Poland (Chicago).
Commenting on the deal, Toyokawa said, "We are extremely delighted to have provided legal assistance to Meiji Yasuda Life on this strategically significant transaction for the expansion of its overseas insurance brokerage operations and profits".
"I'm honored to have assisted Meiji Yasuda Life's legal team on this prestigious transaction. Closely partnering up with our Tokyo office, I was able to draw up on my expertise and strong track record of success with a number of cross-border M&A deals involving Japanese insurance companies", said Craig Roeder.
