Japanese securitization volume has continued to grow rapidly as
restructuring of the financial and corporate sectors has assumed
ever greater urgency.
This is good news for the few Tokyo-based law firms that have
established track records in the speciality. Securitization, and
structured finance in general, has been one of the few guaranteed
fee-earners in recent months, driven by collateralized debt
obligation (CDO) issuance (balance sheet and synthetic) and
residential mortgage-backed and commercial mortgage-backed
securitizations (RMBS and CMBS). The issuance of more traditional
asset types will, according to Fitch Ratings, most probably remain
steady, or enjoy modest growth. Additional activity for this year
is predicted from the Japanese banks which, seeking to manage their
risk exposure, are expected to launch synthetic CDO transactions.
Clifford Chance, one of the leading securitization/structured
finance law firms in Tokyo, has been advising on major deals
including acting for Morgan Stanley on the first
securitization-backed acquisition financing in...
