Kentaro Hirayama is Professor at Tsukuba University, one of the Japanese national university, and the founding partner of Hirayama Law Offices. Before that, he was Of Counsel for Morrison & Foerster LLP. Mr. Hirayama works primarily in the field of antitrust law, government regulations and other corporate legal affairs. He has counseled European, American, Asian and Japanese clients in litigation matters, a number of cartel, monopoly, unfair trade practice, abuse of standard essential patents and related administrative fine cases, as well as merger filings in Japan, China, the EU and the US. His skills and experience in competition and antitrust law is widely recognized and he has been listed as a leading Japanese competition lawyer in Chambers Asia-Pacific (2013 and 2014). In addition to his professional experience, he worked for the Japan Fair Trade Commission (July 2007-June 2010), where he was a case manager in the Marine hose case, other high-profile international cartel cases and an abuse of dominance case. In the course of these worldwide parallel investigations, he also engaged in information exchanges, coordination of simultaneous dawn raids and other collaborations with foreign competition authorities. Since returning to private practice in 2011, he has been active as a non-governmental adviser (NGA) for the International Competition Network (ICN), a forum for approximately 100 national competition agencies worldwide.
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A public corporation, Shin-Tokyo Shintoshi Kensetsu Kosya (the “Ordering Party”), was inviting tenders for the construction of a sewage system. The Japan FTC investigated construction companies, found that many of them were engaged in bid-rigging, and ordered 34 companies to pay administrative (...)
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On June 3, 2009, a number of amendments (the “Amendments”) to the Act governing the Prohibition of Private Monopolization and Maintenance of Fair Trade (the “Act”) were passed by the National Diet of Japan. The Amendments comprise of several changes to the existing Act, including an increase (...)
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Case Summary According to the Japan FTC’s cease and desist order, the Japan FTC investigated Japanese and foreign companies manufacturing and selling marine hose ; they found that the manufacturers and sellers of marine hose had jointly determined the prospective recipient of the orders, (...)
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On March 8, 2005, the Fair Trade Commission of Japan ("JFTC") challenged certain rebate and marketing programs of Intel Corp.’s Japanese subsidiary, Intel K.K., and recommended in a proposed order that Intel eliminate certain exclusivity conditions imposed on five Japanese PC manufacturers (...)
