Okawara joins Baker & McKenzie from Shin-Nihon Ernst & Young where he was a senior partner and headed up the firm’s transfer pricing practice in Japan. He has extensive experience representing Japanese and international clients in negotiations with the tax authorities of Japan and other countries and he has helped clients obtain resolutions to transfer pricing disputes at bilateral and multilateral competent authority proceedings.

Jeremy Pitts, managing partner of the firm’s office in Tokyo said, “we are very excited about the prospect of Ken Okawara and his team joining us. With changes to the Japanese pricing rules proposed in the next year or two, and the increasing focus on transfer pricing issues in many Asian jurisdictions in which Japanese companies own businesses, we believe the time is right to expand the practice”.