This post is also available in: JapaneseThe new corporate governance code in Japan puts further pressure on Japanese companies to have external, independent directors on their boards.  For those companies wanting to be on the new prime market, the code stipulates that a third of directors should be external. Companies are now facing a severe…

This post is also available in: JapanesePernille Rudlin is in conversation with Tom Hayes of BEERG (Brussels European Employee Relations Group) on how Japanese companies have responded to Brexit, tracing the progress of UK/EU/Japanese trade relations from Margaret Thatcher’s promotion of Britain as a Japanese gateway to the EU in the early 1980’s, through to…

This post is also available in: JapaneseOne of the few new Japanese companies to join the Japanese Chamber of Commerce & Industry in the UK in 2020 was Sekisui House. Daiwa House also announced at the end of 2020 that they were going to acquire Dutch modular housing builder Jan Snel. Both companies cite the…

This post is also available in: JapanesePoland and other Eastern European nations are a forgotten economic success story, according to Ruchir Sharma of Morgan Stanley Investment Management in a recent Financial Times opinion piece. The Czech and Slovak Republics, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Slovenia have all made it into the advanced economies, as defined by…

This post is also available in: JapaneseWe’ve just compiled our first ever Top 30 for Japanese employers in Italy (see below for download). We’ve thought for a while that Tōyō Keizai underreported the number of employees in Italy, and that it probably ranked fourth after the UK, Germany and France in terms of numbers employed….

This post is also available in: JapaneseSeven out of the ten best paid executives in Japan are not Japanese, according to Tokyo Shoko Research. It’s been more than ten years since Japanese companies were obliged to disclose the details of executives earning more than ¥100m (around $900K) and was cited as one of the reasons…