* * * * * * * * * T E R R I E 'S T A K E * * * * * * *<br>A weekly roundup of news & information from Terrie Lloyd.<br>(<a href="http://www.terrie.com">http://www.terrie.com</a>)<br><br>General Edition Sunday, July 10, 2011, Issue No. 621<br>
<br>+++ INDEX<br><br>- What's New -- Tracking Future CEOs<br>- News -- Another foreign parent loses child custody<br>- Candidate Roundup/Vacancies<br>- Upcoming Events -- Entrepreneur Seminar moved to Sept.<br>- Corrections/Feedback -- Prosecutor tapes are loaded dice<br>
- News Credits<br><br>SUBSCRIBE to, UNSUBSCRIBE from Terrie's Take at:<br><a href="http://mailman.japaninc.com/mailman/listinfo/terrie">http://mailman.japaninc.com/mailman/listinfo/terrie</a><br><br>BACK ISSUES<br><a href="http://www.japaninc.com/terries_take">http://www.japaninc.com/terries_take</a>, or,<br>
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<br>------------ PBXL is BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS --------------<br><br><br>+++ WHAT'S NEW<br><br>In the months leading up to the Annual General Meeting <br>(AGM) of shareholders, which usually happens in June, <br>Japanese companies like to announce senior personnel <br>
changes, and in particular if there is a new president.<br>Traditionally the president selection process has been<br>about as entertaining as watching paint dry. If the <br>existing CEO was from the founding family, then you could <br>
bet a son, son-in-law, or someone else typically a male <br>from the family would be a prime candidate for the <br>position.<br><br>But if the company was old enough that the family wasn't <br>really involved any more, then depending on the type of <br>
company, the CEO successor would typically be an engineer <br>(Hitachi was famous for this), or the CFO or someone in a <br>bean counting or compliance position. The point is that <br>everything was predictable, companies made enough money to <br>
afford such affectations as management inner sanctums, and <br>only those on the inside would get promoted. <br><br>Of course that all changed when Carlos Ghosn and some other<br>foreigners started getting selected as CEOs so as to rescue<br>
terminally ill companies. And since you can't get much more <br>radical than putting a foreigner in charge, companies are <br>realizing the line has been crossed and other changes are <br>also now acceptable to shareholders. <br>
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------------------------------------------------------------<br><br>[...Article continues]<br><br>Thus, we are seeing the trend of younger more <br>internationalized CEOs being promoted from outside the <br>inner sanctum. These are guys who have done M&A deals that <br>
went extraordinarily well, or who have created major new <br>domestic or international markets.<br><br>The fact that this new breed managers being recognized for <br>international accomplishments is interesting in and of itself, <br>
because traditionally getting posted abroad was a good way<br>of derailing your career for 5-10 years. While you were <br>dispatched to look after the USA or Europe, your colleagues <br>and competitors for promotion would be cozying up to the <br>
Chief and leaving you behind in the promotion stakes. <br><br>Indeed, a friend in a major company told us that once he'd <br>been sent abroad for a second time, he knew that his career<br>prospects at HQ were pretty much done. After realizing <br>
that, he made as much effort as he could to stay abroad <br>continuously and to have a good time doing so. He focused <br>on developing a broad personal network, and became an <br>expert in foreign business at a macro level, and politics. <br>
This turned out to be a good move, because although he did <br>return to Japan eventually, the top job never got offered <br>and instead he kept his head down and retired on a modest <br>pension. Then, after retiring he quickly found a position <br>
lecturing at a private university about international <br>business. <br><br>But we digress. There have been a number of interesting <br>promotions in the last few months that demonstrate that <br>these changes are real. Our first example is 49-year-old <br>
Yoshihito Yamada who became President of Omron on June <br>18th. Yamada was a mover and shaker on two fronts. Firstly,<br>he helped build Omron's healthcare business, a new string <br>to the control equipment maker's bow. Although just 10% of <br>
the group's overall consolidated sales, Healthcare controls<br>and systems in 2009 made a big contribution of 25% of <br>Omron's bottom line. The division got outclassed by the <br>stupendous resumption of growth in Omron's core Industrial <br>
Controls business last year (FY2010), but obviously the <br>earlier contribution didn't go unnoticed.<br><br>Yamada was also apparently instrumental in increasing the <br>European business during his tenure there, and he got Omron<br>
squarely into the huge Russian market. The Nikkei says that<br>through connections he made personally, Omron now owns <br>about 50% of the blood pressure monitoring equipment market<br>there. In 2010, Europe accounted for 15% of sales and is <br>
growing.<br><br>What's important for Omron about Yamada is that not only is <br>he young and internationalized -- important virtues now <br>that almost 50% of the company's sales are coming from <br>overseas operations -- but also that he knows how to grow <br>
businesses from scratch. This ability to inject new and <br>creative thinking, as well as some measured risk-taking, <br>will be what sorts out the success stories from the <br>also-rans amongst Japanese firms in the future.<br>
<br>M&A is also an important strategy for Japanese firms <br>looking for growth. The local markets are dying off, <br>literally, and money is cheap. So it's no wonder that so <br>many Japanese firms are out looking for other companies to <br>
take over and accrue revenues and profits to the parent <br>P&L back in Japan. Getting an acquired company to work <br>properly, especially when the M&A is in the billions of <br>dollars range, requires special talent, and those managers <br>
who get it right are being rewarded accordingly. <br><br>So our second example is Shiseido, which promoted 52-year <br>old Hisayuki Suekawa to President in April. Suekawa was <br>the prime architect behind Shiseido's JPY180bn takeover of <br>
US-based Bare Escentuals. This was the largest M&A deal <br>that Shiseido had ever done, and it was quite risky because<br>Bare Escentuals had already saturated the US market and <br>wasn't likely to grow much further there, plus the firm <br>
distributed through non-standard sales networks -- <br>something new to Shiseido. But since the deal was done <br>almost 9 months ago, the merger of the two firms seems to <br>be going well and as a result Shiseido has risen from 6th <br>
to 4th largest cosmetics company in the world. <br><br>There are many other examples of young blood being brought <br>in to take the helm. According to the Nikkei, 686 firms <br>appointed new presidents in the first half of this year, <br>
with those having presidents in their 50's accounting for <br>46.8% of the total, about 5% more than this time last year.<br><br>We think this internationalization and merit-based <br>promotion trend is quite exciting, because it means that <br>
Japanese firms are becoming more competitive, and also <br>more accessible. Management by inner sanctums runs on a <br>sort of feudal logic that has no place in a contracting <br>market like Japan -- in particular they are inaccessible<br>
to business partners with new ideas. But the new wave of <br>presidents is much more likely to realize through <br>experience that every person they meet and every <br>presentation they receive may contain the seeds of a <br>
business improvement that pole vaults their companies back<br>to market leadership again. For those of us who make a<br>living out of bringing innovation to Japan, this is very<br>good news.<br><br><br>...The information janitors/<br>
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<br>+++ NEWS<br><br>- Another foreign parent loses child and does jail time<br>- High rate of company closures up north<br>- Police website DDoS attacks traced to China<br>- Gasoline demand expected to fall this summer<br>
- French oyster kit to Sanriku<br><br><br><br>-> Another foreign parent loses child and does jail time<br><br>A Mexican national was given a suspended 2-year jail term, <br>after already spending eight months in detention (just like<br>
jail), for trying to kidnap his 1-year old daughter back <br>from his estranged wife in Niigata. Just another in a <br>series of similar incidents, the man tried to take matters <br>into his own hands after becoming estranged from the wife <br>
and wanting to see his daughter. Apparently he broke in to <br>the mother-in-law's home and was arrested shortly after. <br>The mother-in-law claimed an injury causing up to 2 week's <br>of treatment thereafter. ***Ed: This is what happens when <br>
there is no law to force separated couples into proper <br>conciliation and shared child custody -- desperate <br>parents, always the foreign parent, find themselves having <br>to take desperate action. It's shameful that he was <br>
interred for eight months prior to the case coming to <br>court, a low point in Japan's criminal system, and high <br>time that Japan signs the Hague Convention on Child <br>Abduction.** (Source: TT commentary from <a href="http://japantimes.co.jp">japantimes.co.jp</a>, <br>
Jul 7, 2011)<br><br><a href="http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20110707a5.html">http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20110707a5.html</a><br><br>-> High rate of company closures up north<br><br>A survey of 5,004 companies in Iwate, Miyagi, and <br>
Fukushima, conducted by credit rating agency Teikoku <br>Databank in June, has found that as many as 48% of <br>companies have either suspended operations, have gone out <br>of business, or are otherwise not operating The largest <br>
portion of non-operational companies were those in the <br>"unknown" category, being 36.1%, where the owners were <br>generally not contactable. ***Ed: Given the stories of <br>company owners staying behind until all staff had safely <br>
left the premises, it is highly likely that many of these <br>people perished in the Tsunami.** (Source: TT commentary <br>from <a href="http://e.nikkei.com">e.nikkei.com</a>, Jul 8, 2011)<br><br><a href="http://e.nikkei.com/e/ac/tnks/Nni20110708D08JFN02.htm">http://e.nikkei.com/e/ac/tnks/Nni20110708D08JFN02.htm</a><br>
<br>-> Police website DDoS attacks traced to China<br><br>Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks targeting the National <br>Police Agency (NPA) website in September 2011 have been <br>since investigated in detail by the NPA and it was <br>
discovered that the bulk of the traffic came from 25 <br>Chinese IP nodes and 8 Japanese nodes that were servers<br>compromised by hackers. The NPA has since made a request to<br>the Chinese authorities and Interpol to track down the <br>
hackers involved. The DDoS attacks came after a hacking <br>group in China threatened revenge on Japan for the arrest of <br>a Chinese fishing boat skipper. (Source: TT commentary from<br><a href="http://e.nikkei.com">e.nikkei.com</a>, Jul 7, 2011)<br>
<br><a href="http://e.nikkei.com/e/ac/tnks/Nni20110707D07JF018.htm">http://e.nikkei.com/e/ac/tnks/Nni20110707D07JF018.htm</a><br><br>-> Gasoline demand expected to fall this summer<br><br>All is still not well in the travel industry, as it has <br>
emerged that gasoline sales volumes are expected to fall by<br>as much as 7% this year, the largest decline in the last 30<br>years. Oil industry analysts are saying that demand is way <br>down as consumers cut back dramatically on driving in a bid<br>
to economize after the Tohoku earthquake. The situation has<br>been exacerbated by the abandonment of weekend toll road <br>caps of JPY1,000 -- indeed, in the weekend the cap was first<br>removed, gasoline sales plummeted 18%. (Source: TT <br>
commentary from <a href="http://reuters.com">reuters.com</a>, Jul 08, 2011)<br><br><a href="http://reut.rs/oNvTsc">http://reut.rs/oNvTsc</a><br><br>-> French oyster kit to Sanriku<br><br>French oyster farmers have come to the aid of Sanriku <br>
farmers by sending a 7-tonne shipment of buoys, ropes, <br>water-protective clothing, and other items needed to do <br>oyster cultivation. The french farmers are from Brittany <br>and Charente-Maritime, and say that they are repaying Japan<br>
for its help back in 1970 and 1990, when disease killed off<br>much of the french stock, and Japanese farmers sent them <br>oyster larvae to regenerate their populations. ***Ed: Nice <br>to see this kind of directed aid coming in, and even nicer <br>
still the story behind it.** (Source: TT commentary from <br>afp on Google, Jul 08, 2011)<br><br><a href="http://bit.ly/q7usOQ">http://bit.ly/q7usOQ</a><br><br><br>NOTE: Broken links<br>Many online news sources remove their articles after just a<br>
few days of posting them, thus breaking our links -- we<br>apologize for the inconvenience.<br><br>***------------------------****-------------------------***<br><br>------------- Japanese Labor Law in English ---------------<br>
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<br>***------------------------****-------------------------***<br><br>+++ CANDIDATE ROUND UP/VACANCIES<br><br>=> BiOS, a Division of the LINC Media group, is actively<br>marketing the following positions for customers setting up<br>
or expanding in Japan, as well as other employers of<br>bilinguals.<br><br>** HIGHLIGHTED POSITION<br><br>BiOS is urgently looking for an Account Manager with <br>experience selling embedded software services to <br>international corporations at our client’s office in the <br>
Minato-ku area. The candidate will be responsible for <br>building relationships with both new and existing clients <br>to close sales deals of the company’s product with high <br>market share, as well as liaising with internal engineering<br>
and marketing teams in order to provide best and customized<br>services to all clients.<br><br>You will also be responsible for expanding network <br>connections within the industry to promote products and<br>services by attending trade shows, events, etc.<br>
<br>Due to the technical nature and demanding work environment,<br>this position is suitable for someone with solid experience<br>selling embedded software services in Japanese market with <br>proven sales records. In addition, since this role requires<br>
direct negotiations with both Japanese and international <br>clients, business-level communication skills in English and<br>fluent-level communication skills in Japanese will be <br>required.<br><br>Remuneration is JPY7m – JPY11m depending on your experience<br>
and skill level.<br><br>** POSITIONS VACANT<br><br>- Helpdesk Engineer, global med equip co, JPY4M – JPY5.5M<br>- MS Dynamics Specialist, BiOS, JPY6M – JPY8M<br>- Bank Operations Staff, global bank, JPY3.5M – JPY4.5M<br>- Project Manager (Mobile), global sw co, JPY 8M – JPY11M<br>
- MAC Coordinator, global ibank, JPY4M – JPY5M<br><br>Interested individuals may e-mail resumes to:<br><a href="mailto:tomohiro.kimura@biosjp.com">tomohiro.kimura@biosjp.com</a><br><br>** BiOS Job Mail<br><br>Every 2 weeks BiOS sends out a regular communication to its<br>
job seeking candidates, called BiOS Job Mail. Every edition<br>carries a list of BiOS's current and most up-to-date<br>vacancies, with each entry featuring a short job<br>description and a direct link to the main entry on the BiOS<br>
home page. Regardless of whether you are unemployed and<br>searching, thinking about a career change, or just curious<br>to know if there is something out there that might suit you<br>better, the BiOS Job Mail newsletter is an easy and<br>
convenient way for you to stay informed. If you would like<br>to register for the BiOS Job Mail, or to find out more,<br>please email <a href="mailto:kenji.sakota@biosjp.com">kenji.sakota@biosjp.com</a>.<br><br>Interested individuals may e-mail resumes to:<br>
<a href="mailto:tomohiro.kimura@biosjp.com">tomohiro.kimura@biosjp.com</a><br><br>-----------------------------------------------------------<br><br>***------------------------****-------------------------***<br><br>+++ UPCOMING EVENTS/ANNOUNCEMENTS<br>
<br>--------------- Start a Company in Japan ------------------<br><br>Apologies: <br><br>The Entrepreneur's Handbook Seminar scheduled for July 16th<br>has been postponed until September 10th due to low numbers <br>registering. Those people interested in learning how to <br>
start a company, can apply for the September event by <br>visiting the website here: <br><br><a href="http://www.japaninc.com/entrepreneur_handbook_seminar">http://www.japaninc.com/entrepreneur_handbook_seminar</a>.<br>-----------------------------------------------------------<br>
<br>------------------- ICA Event - July 21 -------------------<br><br>Speaker: Kazuaki Hiraga, Senior Software Engineer, Basis <br>Technology<br>Title: 'Lucene/Solr Open-source Enterprise Search Engines'<br><br>Details: Complete event details at <a href="http://www.icajapan.jp/">http://www.icajapan.jp/</a><br>
(RSVP Required)<br><br>Date: Thursday, July 21, 2011<br>Time: 6:30 Doors open, Buffet Dinner included and cash bar<br>Cost: 4,000 yen (members), 6,000 yen (non-members).<br>Open to all. <br>Venue: The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan<br>
<br><a href="http://www.fccj.or.jp/aboutus/map">http://www.fccj.or.jp/aboutus/map</a><br>-----------------------------------------------------------<br><br>***------------------------****-------------------------***<br><br>
+++ CORRECTIONS/FEEDBACK<br><br>In this section we run comments and corrections submitted<br>by readers. We encourage you to spot our mistakes and<br>amplify our points, by email, to <a href="mailto:editors@terrie.com">editors@terrie.com</a>.<br>
<br>*** In TT618 we mentioned a report by the World Justice <br>Project where Japan was ranked 4th for rule of law out of <br>countries globally. Here we have more feedback on that<br>surprising finding.<br><br>=> Reader response:<br>
<br>The piece doesn't report the basis or key factors for the <br>ranking. Probably one key number is the 93-95% conviction <br>rate in Japan. (the actual arrest rate is very much lower).<br>And we know how easy it is for the police in Japan to <br>
brow-beat anyone charged into confessing -- which means <br>they don't have to work so hard to find actual evidence to <br>convict.<br><br>That the prosecutors and police have, so far, only agreed <br>(partially) to videotaping the actual confession itself, <br>
about 15 seconds in most cases they say, and not to <br>anything that is said before is good enough reason to <br>believe these conviction rates could radically change if <br>complete interviews were taped as originally intended.<br>
<br>My take on why the prosecutors have agreed to at least <br>partial taping is that they feel if the jury can watch the <br>charged person actually agreeing to the confession, the <br>jury will more easily disbelieve any recantation and <br>
insistence that the confession was given under duress. I <br>suspect the police and prosecutors have been practicing <br>their "nice cop" table-side manners and are now feeling <br>fairly confident that with these 15 second video clips they<br>
will get high audience (jury) approval ratings. <br><br>Hmmm, could we have the beginnings of a new "reality-soap" <br>show in the coming years?<br><br>***********************************************************<br>
END<br><br>SUBSCRIBERS: 8,889 members as of July 10, 2011<br>(We purge our list regularly.)<br><br>+++ ABOUT US<br><br>STAFF<br>Written by: Terrie Lloyd (<a href="mailto:terrie.lloyd@japaninc.com">terrie.lloyd@japaninc.com</a>)<br>
<br>HELP: E-mail <a href="mailto:Terrie-request@mailman.japaninc.com">Terrie-request@mailman.japaninc.com</a><br>with the word 'help' in the subject or body (don't include<br>the quotes), and you will get back a message with<br>
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Contact <a href="mailto:ads@japaninc.com">ads@japaninc.com</a>.<br><br>SUBSCRIBE<br>Get Terrie's Take by giving your name and email address at<br><a href="http://www.japaninc.com/newsletters/free_sign_up">http://www.japaninc.com/newsletters/free_sign_up</a>, or go<br>
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or, <a href="http://mailman.japaninc.com/pipermail/terrie/">http://mailman.japaninc.com/pipermail/terrie/</a><br><br>Copyright 2011 Japan Inc. Communications Inc.<br><br>----------------- Japan Inc opens up Japan ----------------<br>
<br>J@pan Inc is Japan's only independently published English-<br>language business website. Authoritatively chronicling<br>online the business trends in Japan, each posting brings<br>you in-depth analysis of business, people and technology in<br>
the world's second largest economy.<br><br>Visit <a href="http://www.japaninc.com">www.japaninc.com</a> for the best business insight on<br>Japan available.<br>-----------------------------------------------------------<br>
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