Blake Dawson and Minter Ellison have advised on the A$225m acquisition by a Mitsubishi-led consortium of United Utilities Australia in a deal which Blake Dawson partner Ian Williams says exemplifies recent trends in Japanese-Australia investment. Williams told ALB that infrastructure, consumer goods and financial services were proving to be of particular interest to Japanese investors of late. However, he noted that Japanese investment is often overlooked by the media.

"Japan has been in Australia for a long time with joint ventures - for example, you have massive expansions of existing mines - but these often are not deemed newsworthy. Of course China raises more controversial issues with SOEs and FIRB approvals," he said.

In perhaps what is a market acknowledgement that there is more to M&A than Chinese investment, last year's A$3.3bn Kirin-Lion Nathan acquisition won the award for ALB M&A deal of the year at last week's ALB Law Awards, an accolade which has particularly pleased Blake Dawson. "We've had a focus on Japan for 15 years now - we recruit partners who have lived there and staff who have had some connection with Japan," said Williams, who himself spent five years working for a Japanese steel company. The firm has seen a 20% increase in Japan-related transactional work over the past five years and is expecting "incremental" increase to flow from its new Tokyo office. "A lot of Japanese companies have their head offices outside of Tokyo, so they are hard to access purely on a fly in, fly out basis," observed Williams.