Thomas J. Dreves Biography
Mr. Dreves has over twenty-five years’ experience in assisting top-tier and innovative foreign and Japanese banks, securities firms and corporations on foreign and Japanese legal matters, including experience within a premier Japanese bank in New York and a leading Wall Street investment bank in New York and Tokyo, and with the world’s largest international law firm, a leading New York law firm and with leading Japanese lawyers (bengoshi).
A graduate of Harvard Law School, Mr. Dreves worked in law firms in Tokyo from 1984 to 1988. He moved to New York in 1988, continuing his representation of Japanese financial institutions. In 1995, he joined the New York office of the leading Japanese long-term credit bank, The Industrial Bank of Japan (now Mizuho), where he spent over five years helping to establish its legal department. He joined the premier international investment bank Morgan Stanley in 2000 and returned to Tokyo to provide transactional and regulatory coverage for Morgan Stanley Japan’s fixed income structured products, derivatives, foreign exchange and commodities business unit, including preparation for their successful supervisory examination.
He moved to the Tokyo office of the world’s largest international law firm, Baker & McKenzie in 2002, where as a partner he worked with Japanese lawyers in assisting foreign financial institutions with regulatory and transactional matters in Japan, worked with attorneys in other offices on multi-jurisdictional deals with a US securities element, advised Japanese financial firms on foreign law issues, and assisted Japanese energy companies in relation to project finance and commercial aspects of major oil and gas projects throughout Asia.
Mr. Dreves is a native of Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.
Education, Licenses and Memberships
Harvard Law School, J.D. 1983
Georgetown University, A.B. Government 1980 (magna cum laude)
Admitted as a Registered Foreign Lawyer in Japan
Admitted as a lawyer in New York State
Admitted as a lawyer in Washington State
Special Member, Tokyo Bar Association and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations
Member, Association of the Bar of the City of New York
Member, Washington State Bar Association
Member, American Chamber of Commerce in Japan
Member, Futures Industry Association, Japan Chapter
Member, Association of International Petroleum Negotiators
Languages: Fluent in written and spoken business Japanese
Experience: See Areas of Practice.