Executive

Reijiro Yamamoto, a founding Partner of Integral and GCA, has over 20 years of experience in investment banking activities including domestic and cross-border M&A, MBOs, LBOs, going-private transactions, debt-restructuring, workouts of multi-national insolvent companies and sales of non-performing loans in Japan, Europe and the US. He is extremely knowledgeable on deal financing issues, having arranged, structured, negotiated financing for numerous transactions.

Reijiro Yamamoto began his career with Mitsui Bank (the current Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC)) in 1984. In 1990, he joined AT Kearney as a management consultant in Chicago and subsequently, he moved to London in 1991, where he engaged in Sakura Bank’s (currently SMBC’s) structured finance. After 7+ years in London, he returned to Japan in 1998 and joined Sakura Bank’s Mergers and Acquisitions Department (currently SMBC’s M&A firm) where he was in charge of the cross-border M&A group. In 2000, he joined Unison Capital, one of the first buyout funds in Japan.

When he was with Unison Capital, he played a key role in the success of Unison’s first fund. He provided advisory services to his portfolio companies often taking on the director role at the companies in which the fund invested.
While at GCA, he structured and closed the MBO of World Co., Ltd., the largest MBO in Japan and also led a lot of landmark M&A deals of Japan such as a US$19 billion worth merger between Hankyu and Hanshin railway companies.

He was also an investment committee of Fund I of Mezzanine Corporation, a 100% subsidiary of GCA and the first independent Mezzanine investment firm in Japan.

Reijiro Yamamoto is a frequent speaker at seminars regarding M&A and buyouts at Waseda University, Hitotsubashi ICS and other forums. He received his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania as well as a Masters from the Lauder Institute. He earned his undergraduate degree from Hitotsubashi University, where he majored in Economics.

Yoshihiro Hemmi, a founding partner, is one of Japan’s rare consultant turned CEO, with a distinguished track record in the two companies he led. He began his business career with a ten-year career at Mitsui & Co. in Japan and the U.S. He then spent eight years consulting companies as a partner at a global management consulting firm, engaging in projects in many industries, followed by eight years on the corporate side as the top manager of two companies, one a start-up and the other a turnaround, which he led to dynamic growth and value enhancements.

At Mitsui & Co., he began in domestic sales & marketing in the Chemicals Division, then was transferred to Mitsui & Co. USA to promote foreign direct investment in the U.S. and Canada. He participated in establishing and managing Mitsui’s joint ventures in the chemical/plastics sector with such firms as Mitsui Chemicals, Toyota Gosei, Union Carbide and Toyo Ink.

At Boston Consulting Group, he was engaged in a variety of project themes in the Tokyo and Chicago offices including strategy, organization design, marketing, sales, SCM, HRM, Japan market entry (by foreign companies) and global expansion (for Japanese companies). He covered many industrial sectors including food, apparel, retail, pharmaceutical, industrial (chemical and cement), logistics and IT.

At adidas Japan, he participated in the establishment of a new Japanese subsidiary as a top Japanese manager. He contributed to building the company from scratch, planning and executing new strategies in marketing, sales, product procurement, logistics, organization design, corporate culture building, HRM and new business development. Since its establishment in 1998, adidas Japan has significantly enhanced its brand image, and in 2006 sales surpassed the 100 billion yen mark.

As President & CEO at Tohato, he led the company’s effort to renew its corporate brand image, developing new hit products, building management systems, renewing the corporate culture and building a new management team. As a result, the company completed its revitalization under Japan’s Civil Rehabilitation Law (Japan’s version of Chapter 11) in three years, and significantly increased its corporate value.

Kensaku Mizutani, a founding partner of Integral Corporation, has significant expertise in investment banking including M&A advisory and mezzanine investment. His experience has included working for a Japanese trading company, an investment bank, an independent M&A advisory firm, and an independent mezzanine fund.

Prior to founding Integral, Kensaku Mizutani worked for Mezzanine Corporation (MCo), a wholly-owned subsidiary of GCA Corporation, which was the first independent, full-fledged mezzanine fund (JPY68.7billion) in Japan in established in 2006. While with MCo, He executed 2 precedent-setting mezzanine investments , for which he was involved in sourcing, origination, structuring, and execution.

Prior to joining MCo, Kensaku Mizutani focused on M&A advisory for both domestic and cross-border M&A transactions. He advised on numerous deals through his positions at GCA and Morgan Stanley.

Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Kensaku Mizutani worked for Mitsubishi Corporation as a member of the project finance department where he focused on the non-recourse financing of infrastructure / mineral resource projects, Official Development Assistance, Export Machinery Plant in developing countries.

Ms. Hayase has experience in cross-border M&A advisory at one of the leading banks in Japan. Her assignments included divestitures of subsidiary, division buyout, and company revitalization in heavy machinery/TMT industries. After joining the global strategic consulting firm, she worked in Japan and in the US offices on projects such as strategy planning, new business development, business process improvement for clients in CPG, finance, TMT, and automobile sectors. Ms. Hayase joined Integral shortly after its foundation in 2007.

Nobuo Sayama, a founding Partner of Integral and GCA, and potentially the most well-known investment banker in Japan, has over 20 years of experience in the investment banking and corporate turnarounds. He began his M&A career in 1987 with Mitsui Bank (currently Sumitomo Mitsui Bank) and led the M&A team’s domestic and cross-border efforts in New York from 1990 to 1995. During the recession years of the late 1990s, he dealt with distressed deals and is known for pioneering the sale of distressed companies in Japan. He has extensive experience in many significant high profile deals, healthy and distressed, domestic and cross-border.He is well-known for his negotiation technique and style and is well sought after as an advisor.

After a 10+ year career with Mitsui Bank, Nobuo Sayama jointly established Unison Capital as a representative director and partner. Unison Capital was one of the first Japanese buyout funds which specialized in corporate turnarounds, which at the time was a new concept in Japan. While at Unison, He and his team led the turnaround of Tohato, a well-known confectionary maker, and Kiriu, a car parts manufacturer. In May 2003, he became director of Global Corporate Advisory and then assumed the position as representative director at GCA in April 2004. Prior to his investment banking career, he worked for Teijin, a fibers manufacturer, as an engineer and was involved in manufacturing technology development for polymerization of polyester as well as new product R&D.

Recently, Nobuo Sayama advised Hankyu Holdings Inc. on its merger with Hanshin Electric Railway Co., which was the largest post-war private railway merger in Japan. One of his most famous transactions was Crown Leasing, a subsidiary of Nippon Credit Bank (the current Aozora Bank), which went bankrupt with debt of over 1 trillion yen in 1997, the largest debt in the history at that time. He sold the assets amounting to over 350 billion yen of domestic lease sales as well as overseas assets in a short 2-month time frame and concurrently disposed of other domestic and overseas assets. Concurrently, he pioneered the bulk-sale of non-performing loans through this transaction where he also sold approximately 300 billion yen in NPLs over a 3 month-period. His bulk-sale method became the foundation of bad debt bulk-sale in Japan. Additionally, he is well-known for his role in the Okura Shoji bankruptcy in 1998 where he divested the airplane segment and wine business in one month, which set a precedent for bankrupt companies in Japan.

Nobuo Sayama is recognized as an M&A expert in Japan and frequently appears on televised economic debates regarding recent corporate finance topics in Japan. He is a professor at post graduate International Corporate Strategy course at Hitotsubashi University. He is well published, with works including: “Economic Analysis by Financial Information,” “Japanese M&A Practice Course,” “The Revitalization Business and Methods,” “Legal Liquidation for Corporate Revitalization: Focusing on the New Corporate Rehabilitation Act,” “Textbook for Licensing Examination of Business Administration Study: Issues for Today’s Management” and “Pre-Packaged Business Revitalization.”

Nobuo Sayama received his MBA from the Stern School of Business in at NYU. He also completed a doctoral course at the department of Industrial Engineering and Management Tokyo Institute of Technology (Ph.D.). He earned his bachelors degree from Kyoto University, where he majored in Engineering.

Nobuo Sayama is a member of the Japanese Association of Turnaround Professionals (Executive Director), Japanese Association for Business Recovery, Japan Corporate Finance Association and The Japanese Association of Management Accounting. He has been a key member of various committees of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry including the MBO committee and the pre-packaged filing committee.

While Satoko Niiya was at one of the largest law firms in Japan, she conducted legal reviews of transaction schemes, conducted due diligence, negotiated and drafted contracts, and was involved in a great deal of regulation work related to M&As in transactional deals between companies and, in particular, M&As with a variety of structures. In addition to transactional deals, SatokoNiiya also has experience with legal disputes in and out of court involving companies and she has provided legal advice to companies on corporate governance.

Aiming to provide advice that is more tailored to clients, SatokoNiiya left her previous firm and established STW & Partners in 2007 together with seven other lawyers from that firm.

Satoko Niiya has been appointed as an outside director of several listed companies, so she is broadly required to provide advice to the directors of those companies not only from a legal perspective, but also from an economic perspective.

Hidetsune Goto has consistently worked with the theme of corporate evolution by making efforts in strategy development and its thorough execution, and has contributed to enhance the corporate value.

He began his career at Procter & Gamble Far East Inc. in the marketing department. As a brand manager in the matured detergent category, he drove business double by leading innovative marketing program such as value added product introduction and 3rd party endorsement marketing plan.

At Boston Consulting Group inc., he worked for many project themes such as sales strategy development with support for its execution, new business development and post merger integration at consumer goods, pharmaceutical and IT sectors.

At Tohato inc., which was under Japan’s Civil Rehabilitation Law (Japan’s version of Chapter 11), he planned the 3 years turnaround program and developed management infrastructure as operating officer in the strategic planning department. Then, he executed turnaround plan at plant by becoming manufacturing director, and led whole operation (marketing, sales and manufacturing) as vice president & COO to drive business. As a result, company successfully completed its turnaround phase.

Before joining Integral Corporation, he worked for Paris Miki Inc., a leading optical retail chain in Japan, as an operating officer in the strategic department.

Mr. Yamazaki has engaged in private equity investment since the early 2000s consistently.

In addition to investment analysis and execution, he has a wealth of experience in participating in the management of portfolio companies for value-creation on hands-on basis and in fund-raising from institutional investors.

Prior to joining Integral Corporation, Mr. Yamazaki worked at Industrial Revitalization Corporation of Japan(IRCJ) from 2004 and was mainly involved in corporate revitalization project of small and middle-sized manufacturing company. His responsibility included due diligence, planning of corporate revitalization program, execution of investment, hands-on management support to portfolio company, execution of exiting IRCJ’s investment.

Before joining IRCJ, Mr. Yamazaki worked at Strategic Business Transformation division of Deloitte Tohmatsu Consulting (now known as Abeam Consulting) and was involved in several business process transformation projects including cost reduction, inventory reduction, and operational improvement of automobile, retail, bank, and trading companies.

Mr. Nishioka joined Integral in September 2014. He was in charge of investment at Skymark Airlines Inc. (“Skymark”), where he was stationed to provide the support for the management of Skymark. He left Integral in October 2019 to assume the position of Representative Director, Senior Managing Director and Executive Officer at Skymark. Then, he resigned the position at Skymark’s general meeting of shareholders held in June 2024. He starts to work at Integral again in September 2024 and was appointed as a Partner at the same time.

Prior to joining Integral Corporation, he engaged in investment banking at Morgan Stanley from 2005, where he provided M&A advisory to clients mainly in consumer goods, financial services, technology, and telecom/media industries. Before joining Morgan Stanley, he was an investment analyst covering food/beverage and non-bank financial services sectors at Tokio Marine Asset Management.

ex-Professor Emeritus, Hitotsubashi University

ex-Professor, Harvard University, Graduate School of Business Administration

Hirotaka Takeuchi received his B.A. from International Christian University in Tokyo and M.B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

He was an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Business School from 1976 to 1983, where he taught courses in marketing and retailing in the MBA program. He joined Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo as an Associate Professor in 1983 and became Professor in 1987. He returned to the Harvard Business School as a Visiting Professor in 1989 and 1990, where he taught “Competition and Strategy.”

Hirotaka Takeuchi’s current research interests are focused on (a) the role of marketing within a firm’s global strategy, (b) the unique features of the Japanese new product development process, (c) the competitiveness of Japanese firms in global industries, and (d) the knowledge creation process within organizations.

He is the author of The Best Practice Revolution (Diamond-sha, 1994, in Japanese) and the co-author of the following books: (1) Corporate Self-Innovation: Managing Chaos and Creation (Takeuchi et al., Chuo Koron-sha, 1986, in Japanese); (2) Managing Heterogeneity: The Path to Global Management (Takeuchi and Yoko Ishikura, Diamond-sha, 1994, in Japanese); (3) The Knowledge Creating Company (Ikujiro Nonaka and Takeuchi, Oxford University Press, 1995), which won the 1995 “Best New Book of the Year” Award for the Business and Management category by the Association of American Publishers; (4) Can Japan Compete? (M. Porter, H. Takeuchi, and M. Sakakibara, 2000, London: McMillan in English, and Diamond-sha in Japanese), and (5) Hitotsubashi on Knowledge Management (I. Nonaka and H. Takeuchi, John Wiley & Sons, 2004), and (6) Extreme Toyota (H. Takeuchi and N. Shimizu and E. Osono, John Wiley & Sons, 2008).

In addition, he has written over 30 articles for the Harvard Business Review, California Management Journal, Journal of Retailing, Japan Marketing Journal, Business Review, and other academic journals, and nearly 70 articles for business magazines.

His business experience includes management consulting work with McKinsey & Company in Tokyo and marketing research and account service work with McCann-Erikson in Tokyo and San Francisco. He is consultant to a number of multinationals and has been a frequent speaker at management conferences and seminars around the world.

He is a member of a number of committees formed by government agencies, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry in particular, and political organizations in Japan. In addition, he is a member of the planning board of the World Economic Forum.

Distinguished Professor, Keio University

Representative Director of Tsuruoka Science Park

Born in Tokyo in 1957. After graduating from the Faculty of Engineering at Keio University, he studied at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, where he completed a master’s program (1983) and a doctoral program (1985) in the School of Computer Science. After that, he served as an Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Associate Director of the Center for Machine Translation at Carnegie Mellon University.

Since 1990, he has served as an Assistant Professor, Professor, and Dean of Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University. Dr. Tomita has also served Director General of the Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University.

Major prizes awarded include Presidential Young Investigators Award from National Science Foundation of USA (1988), Shared University Research Award from IBM Corporation (2003), Minister of Science and Technology Award (2007), International Society of Metabolomics Lifetime Achievement Award (2009), Yamagata Prefecture Special Achievement Award (2017), 68th Kahoku Bunka Prize (2019), 5th Bioindustry Award Grand Prize (2021), and 27th Momofuku Ando Award Grand Prize (2023).

Masaaki Kushida was elected Corporate Auditor of Integral Corporation in March 2008 at its Shareholders’ Meeting. Prior to taking office at Integral, he had been Senior Corporate Auditor of Yokohama Rubber Company (YRC) for 7 years. During the time, his focus of interest ranged from “Corporate Governance”, “Compliance”, “Internal Control System” to ”Disclosure of Corporate Information” .

Masaaki Kushida began his career at the Industrial Bank of Japan in 1966, where he worked for diverse departments including Human Resources Dept., Project Appraisal Dept., Loan Dept., International Business Dept. with assignments at the London Branch and Securities Dept. After 30 years of various business experiences with IBJ, He served as the Director at YRC in charge of Purchase Dept., International Planning Dept., Planning Dept. of Non-tire-business Division for 5 years. He also experienced the positions of Chairman and CEO of subsidiaries in USA.

Masaaki Kushida graduated from the University of Tokyo, where he majored in Law.He holds the title of “Registered Management Consultant” with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

CPA, The office Mitsuhashi
Representative Director, Sustainable Value Advisory Co., Ltd.

Attorney at law, partner of Gaien Partners (2020-)