Practice Areas
Compliance, Regulations & Risk Management
If there is any misconduct that occurs in connection with a company’s corporate activities (breach of duty to disclose, false labeling, involvement of organized crime, legal violations, etc.), both the company and its executives may incur direct damages as well as losses that result from the diminishment of the company’s brand image. In recent years, there has been an increasing concern over violations of foreign laws and regulations, such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the U.S. and the EU competition laws, due to a number of cases where many Japanese companies doing business overseas have been subjected to heavy fines and surcharges.
To combat legal violations and other misconduct, our firm offers compliance and risk management services to our clients, such as creating a compliance program, conducting training sessions, setting up and maintaining external compliance hotlines, and assisting with internal audits (intracompany and intragroup audits). When there is an actual incident, we will take prompt action with regard to the relevant parties (customers, suppliers, regulatory authorities, employees, etc.) and set up an independent committee.
For information regarding domestic and foreign competition laws such as the Antimonopoly Act, please also see the “Antimonopoly Act, Antitrust Law, Subcontracting Act, Premiums and Representations Act” page.
Representative matters in which our attorneys have been involved
- Maintains an external compliance hotline for a publicly held company under the Whistleblower Protection Act and handles a variety of matters, ranging from general inquiries to the reporting of misconduct.
- Provided practical and effective advice by attorneys with working experience at the National Police Agency, the Financial Services Agency and the Local Finance Bureaus to banks, investment banks and securities brokerage regarding Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (including but not limited to insider trading regulations), Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds and other regulations.
- Assisted in the establishment of compliance programs and the conducting of compliance training in various industries.
- Supporting external and internal audits by working together with our clients’ compliance and internal audit departments.
- Conducted external investigations acting as an independent committee or collaborating with internal audit divisions on alleged wrongdoing in the corporation.
- Extensive experience in terminating the legal relationship between so called “anti-social force” (i.e. a criminal organization, a member of a criminal organization, a corporation related to a criminal organization, etc.) and our clients, including but not limited to banks, insurance companies, leasing companies, credit companies, debt collection companies etc.
- Advised and supported our client from the occurrence of a misconduct until the resolution of the situation, including dealing with consumers and the media and submitting reports to the regulatory authorities.
- Advised our client on how to deal with unreasonable demands that it received in connection with the recall of a product.