Biography: Competition

Kenji Ito is a partner at Mori Hamada & Matsumoto, based in Tokyo, who primarily practises in the area of antitrust and competition law. He served as an official at the Japan Fair Trade Commission, the competition authority in Japan, from 2003 to 2005, where he was engaged in a number of antitrust cases. He has extensive experience in merger clearance for cross-border M&A transactions, government investigations of international cartels, private actions and antitrust counselling involving a variety of business activities including distribution, licensing, joint ventures, and other business alliances. He has addressed a wide range of competition law matters in various industries including IT, telecoms, the financial sector, pharmaceuticals, electronics, chemicals, automotives, foods, natural resources, wholesale and retail, and other manufacturing and service industries. He has represented many multinational clients as well as Japanese clients.

He has been frequently listed as a leading expert in competition law in The International Who's Who of Competition Lawyers and Economists, Chambers Asia and other publications. He is an active member of the Japan Competition Law Forum. He has written many articles for various publications on competition law and spoken at many international conferences and seminars.

Kenji Ito is a graduate of Kyoto University (LLB, 1995) and Georgetown University (LLM, 2002). He is admitted to the Bar in both Japan and New York.