Toray chief Sakakibara will lead Keidanren

January 12, 2014 Leave a comment

Toray chief Sakakibara will lead Keidanren

KYODO, JIJI

JAN 9, 2014

The nation’s most influential business lobby plans to appoint Toray Industries Inc. Chairman Sadayuki Sakakibara as its next chairman, Keidanren officials said Thursday.

Sakakibara, 70, accepted the request to assume the chairmanship at the group’s general meeting in June, they said. He will replace 76-year-old Hiromasa Yonekura, who has led the group since 2010.Keidanren will officially announce the appointment of Sakakibara, after a meeting on Tuesday, according to informed sources.

Sakakibara served as Keidanren’s vice chairman from 2007 to 2011.

Keidanren usually selects its leader from current vice chairmen, so the choice of a former vice chairman is rare.

Sakakibara is also a private-sector member of the government’s council to boost industrial competitiveness.

Before becoming chairman of the major fiber and textile maker in 2010, Sakakibara served as president, overseeing the company’s shift to carbon fiber used in aircraft as its mainline operation.

It is the first time Keidanren has picked someone from Toray to head the group.

In recent years, Keidanren chiefs have served four-year stints.

Hitachi picks president

BLOOMBERG

Hitachi Ltd. is promoting Senior Vice President Toshiaki Higashihara, replacing Hiroaki Nakanishi, who will be elevated to chairman.

Higashihara will take on his new role April 1, according to a statement sent Wednesday to the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Nakanishi will also become Hitachi’s chief executive officer.

Hitachi has merged units, pared costs and cut television output under Nakanishi to help improve competitiveness against Siemens AG and General Electric Co.

The Tokyo-based company has over the past three years sold its hard-disk drive business and announced plans to merge the energy-equipment businesses with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.

The industrial manufacturer is focusing on expanding its infrastructure business and is setting up a factory in the U.K. to build trains after winning a tender in the country in 2012.

Hitachi will also consider expanding the U.K. facility or opening a railcar plant in Germany, Nakanishi said last month.

Higashihara, 58, is currently in charge of the company’s infrastructure and medical businesses, according to the statement.

He joined the company in 1977, it said.

Filed under Macro Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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