AGM Season in Japan: Time to Encourage Director Training!

Unfortunately, every June at AGMs in Japan most investors approve the vast majority of director candidates –even first-time director candidates — without confirming whether they have ever received any form of director training to prepare them, or a “refresher” course on emerging issues and new best practices. Because of this, an increasingly large percent of directors in Japan have served less than three years (at least 30% in the case of outside directors!) in their very first director position, but have never even received basic training.  METI and the FSA are starting to consider this as a major problem.

Serving as a director on a public company board is not the same job as serving as a lawyer, academic, or the head of global sales.  It requires different knowledge, mindset and preparation.  Raising PBRs, improving sustainability, DEI, and optimizing the business portfolio are not going to “happen” by themselves just because those topics appear in pronouncements and the press.  They will only take root and consistently improve if the quality of Japanese boards increases.  But right now, the average quality of boards is quite low, as can be seen from these…

Director Skills in Japan: The Picture Worth 1,000 Words

Take a look at the chart below, from materials recently published by the FSA’s Committee on the Stewardship Code and the Corporate Governance Code.  This is from an analysis of ALL directors (both executive and non-executive) at TSE1 firms that disclosed a skills matrix in 2019.  From left to right, the categories are: a) technology; b) finance and/or accounting; c) executive management experience; and d) global (international) experience.  Can you guess which country is the dark blue bar?  Yep, that low guy is Japan. Right across the board.

Director skill gaps in Japan - BDTI

Japanese Institutional Investors Need to Take Their Own ESG Medicine

Does anyone have any theories as to why institutional investors that support director training in Japan are overwhelmingly foreign, and not Japanese?

The Board Director Training Institute of Japan (BDTI) was established as a “public interest” nonprofit in order to enable Japanese institutional investors to support something badly needed by their home market, director and governance training, on a tax-deductible basis…. so that such training could be offered at high quality yet low price, thereby spreading customs of governance/director training throughout Japan. However, after running BDTI for eight years since obtaining certification, we have noticed a disturbing but continuing reality: over time, more than 95% of BDTI’s donations from institutional investors have come from foreign institutions or fund managers, and less than 5% of donations to BDTI have come from Japanese institutions. Moreover, none of the Japanese institutional donors are “major” (top 30) investing institutions in Japan.

Public Comment to the METI Fair M&A Study Group (by Nicholas Benes)

As the person who initially proposed the Corporate Governance Code to the LDP in 2013 and 2014, I am well aware of its limitations in various areas. For this reason, I am very pleased that Fair M&A Study Group have decided that its discussions should cover not only MBOs, but also ”cases which are likewise significantly affected by the issues of conflict of interest and information asymmetry”[1], including “cases of acquisition of a controlled company by its controlling shareholder.”[2]

This indeed an important mission, because these topics include virtually all types of M&A transactions and the public statements of executives and boards with regard to them. For many years in the post-war era, the failure of the government and the JPX/TSE to set forth clear bright-line rules that facilitate a fair, robust M&A market in Japan has stunted productivity, dynamism and growth in the Japanese economy.

Letter from a Person Who is Concerned about the Nissan Affair:  a View from the Inside of Another Company

As you might imagine I have been besieged by inquiries from the press when I have little knowledge of what is going on, or went on, a Nissan.  I also received this spontaneous email from a friend who is concerned about the Nissan-Ghosn affair.  Having “sanitized” it, with permission I am posting it.  This particular person worked in matters related to legal compliance for 10 years at a major Japanese company.

Dear Mr Benes:

I retired nine months ago ago and after a long vacation, recently I have finally got around to looking for an outside director or other similar position.

Anyway, I wanted to write because I was floored by the whole Ghosn spectacle.  I am not close to that company, but was astounded that they chose to turn over and have arrested two foreign senior staff (Chairman and his aide) for redirecting assets to his own account “over several years.”  I was floored because:

a) Neither of them is likely that spiffy at Japanese and would need other staff to prepare the transactions for them.  Indeed even had they been Japanese staff themselves this would have required a certain amount of nemawashi at least the way the companies I am familiar with are now run.  Gone are the days when 10,000 here and 100,000 there can be disbursed at some executive’s personal discretion…..

September 20th “Director Boot Camp” – Another Successful Program! Next Course: November 22nd

On September 20th, BDTI held its English Director Boot Camp , attended by a number of highly experienced participants. Participants from various companies heard lectures about corporate governance by Nicholas Benes and Andrew Silberman of AMT, and exchanged experiences and opinions at a spacious, comfortable room kindly donated for our use by Cosmo Public Relations, a leading communications and PR firm in Tokyo.

We are planning to hold the next course on Thursday, November 22nd. Sign up early!

BDTI Update to Supporters, June 2018

Notes: (1) On this page (at top right), you can sign up to receive our English Newsletter; (2) Sign up to receive the (separate) Japanese Newsletter here; (3) Anyone can support the “SEO” of our web site simply by mentioning BDTI on any web page with a link to this page; (4) For details about the chart, see the overview materials.

” Dear Supporter:   I am writing to update you, and to respectfully ask you or your institution to make a donation of 300,000 Yen or more this year, either as a Sustaining Donor or as a Corporate Participating Member. (As explained below in section 5, the latter category now allows donors which are investing institutions to receive 40% discounts on all BDTI courses/seminars that are open to the public, and to share these discounts with companies in their portfolio.)

May 22nd “Director Boot Camp” – Another Successful Program! Next Course: Sep 20th

On May 22nd, BDTI held its English Director Boot Camp , attended by a number of highly experienced participants. Participants from various companies heard lectures about corporate governance by Nicholas Benes and Andrew Silberman of AMT, and exchanged experiences and opinions at a spacious, comfortable room kindly donated for our use by Cosmo Public Relations, a leading communications and PR firm in Tokyo.

We are planning to hold the next course on Thursday, September 20th. Sign up early!

August 30th “Director Boot Camp” …Next Course: October 26th!

BDTI’s August 30th English Director Boot Camp was a great success, with active participation by a diverse group of Japanese, American、and European persons! Participants from various companies heard lectures about corporate governance and related topics by Nicholas Benes and Andrew Silberman of AMT, and exchanged experiences and opinions at a spacious, comfortable room kindly donated for our use by Cosmo Public Relations, a leading communications and PR firm in Tokyo.

Thank you all for coming!

The next course will be held on Thursday, October 26th. Sign up now to secure your spot!

What Correlates with Superior Corporate Performance? (Summary of Research)

BDTI and METRICAL conducted joint research regarding the governance structure/practices and related corporate actions that correlate with superior firm performance in Japan, and reported on the preliminary results at seminars hosted by BDTI on March 16th and by Goldman Sachs on April 4th. Our research is still underway, but the preliminary results are intriguing and provide useful guidance for the next stage of analysis.

BDTI and METRICAL believe that corporate governance is not functioning effectively unless it leads to superior strategy, fine-tuning of capital allocation and capital structure, and other value-creating corporate actions.  Therefore, in our research we have sought to identify the apparent linkages and correlations between board practice, key corporate actions, and value creation.

In Phase 1 of our analysis, we studied the TOPIX100 Index composite (large 100 companies) to see whether scores we assessed for each company’s nomination policy, training policy, compensation policy, board evaluation policy, and the % of independent directors significantly correlate with ROA and ROE.