Baker McKenzie Advises J-STAR and Potentia on their Acquisition of jinjer in Japan

Baker & McKenzie (Gaikokuho Joint Enterprise) (“Baker McKenzie”) advised J-STAR Co., Ltd. (“J-STAR”) and Potentia Capital (“Potentia”) on their joint acquisition of jinjer, one of Japan’s leading HR SaaS players. The transaction involved the purchase of all outstanding shares in the company for an undisclosed sum.

J-STAR, a prominent Japanese private equity firm specializing in mid-cap companies with approximately JPY 200 billion in assets under management, invested in jinjer via its JPY 75 billion J-STAR No. 5 Fund. Potentia, Australasia’s leading technology-focused private equity and growth capital firm with over AUD 2 billion in assets under management, invested via its Fund 2, which was established with AUD 670 million from institutional investors in 2022.

jinjer is a provider of multi-module, cloud-based HR SaaS solutions to enterprise customers in the Japanese market. It has seen rapid growth for the last three years as its product line has expanded. jinjer’s market leading SaaS platform covers the full employee lifecycle — from HR management to payroll, time and attendance, expenses, workflow, performance evaluation and talent management. With a single integrated database and a modern code base, jinjer is one of the only Japanese HR SaaS providers that delivers a truly seamless and integrated user experience across the whole HR stack.

The transaction was led by Tetsuo Tsujimoto and Shinichiro Kitamura, partners in the Baker Tokyo Corporate/M&A and Finance & Projects Groups, respectively. They were supported by Corporate/M&A Group partner Satoshi Abe, senior associate Tatsuya Niwa and associate Takahiro Toda, IP Tech Group partner Tsugihiro Okada, and Finance & Projects Group counsel Takuya Wada and associate Akiko Tsuji.