Pernille Rudlin - Rudlin Consulting

About Pernille Rudlin

Pernille Rudlin was brought up partly in Japan and partly in the UK. She is fluent in Japanese, and lived in Japan for 9 years.

She spent nearly a decade at Mitsubishi Corporation working in their London operations and Tokyo headquarters in sales and marketing and corporate planning and also including a stint in their International Human Resource Development Office.

More recently she had a global senior role as Director of External Relations, International Business, at Fujitsu, the leading Japanese information and communication technology company and the biggest Japanese employer in the UK, focusing on ensuring the company’s corporate messages in Japan reach the world outside.

Pernille Rudlin holds a B.A. with honours from Oxford University in Modern History and Economics and an M.B.A. from INSEAD and she is the author of several books and articles on cross cultural communications and business.

Since starting Japan Intercultural Consulting’s operations in Europe in 2004, Pernille has conducted seminars for Japanese and European companies in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, UAE, the UK and the USA, on Japanese cultural topics, post merger integration and on working with different European cultures.

Pernille is a non-executive director of Japan House London, an Associate of the Centre for Japanese Studies at the University of East Anglia and she is also a trustee of the Japan Society of the UK.

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Here are my most recent posts

Japan’s “weak black” companies and the motivation to work

It has been five years since the “work style reforms” of the Shinzo Abe Cabinet of 2016 were introduced, supposedly making it easier for Japanese employees to have diverse and flexible work styles. The pandemic has given the reforms a further push, but, as the Nikkei Business magazine asks, have these reforms really had the expected positive impact on retention rates?

The Nikkei asked three masked recruitment agents (masked to conceal their identity rather than for health reasons we assume) for their impressions so far and it seems that because the underlying problem of employee engagement has not been addressed, if anything the reforms have accelerated the rate at which people are leaving their jobs.

Agent A : Through work style reforms, companies have complied with the new laws by reducing overtime hours and encouraging the use of paid leave. Many people chose larger, stable companies because they were more likely to comply with the requirements to reduce overtime work.

But at the same time, the pandemic meant that companies started looking more seriously at automation and the use of AI so manufacturers, many of whom who were previously seen as being in the large and stable category, became a riskier bet as they started to restructure and did not seem to be growing as positively as before.

“When a young person who wants to work more and develop faster is told to “go home at 6 pm”, he or she may feel that “I want to work more but I am being constrained.” There are an increasing number of young people who are daring to commit to a growth environment, such as changing jobs from major companies to new ventures and startups. ”

Agent B : During the pandemic, the reason for changing jobs switched from focusing on workplace comfort to focusing on personal goals. According to a survey by Doda, a job switching service, the number one reason for changing jobs from January to March 2020 before the declaration of emergency [in Japan] was “because the atmosphere in the company is bad”, but after the declaration of emergency during the period of April to August 2020, it changed to “Because the salary is low and no salary increase can be expected.” Also of note was that “I want to improve my skills” jumped from 6th place before the state of emergency to 2nd place.

Weak black companies

Companies which are easy to work in but have no growth are called “Yuru Black” in Japan. Employees in Yuru Black companies have a sense of crisis about whether they are growing and developing as a person. “Black companies” was the name given to companies where there was too much overtime. “Yuru” means weak, so these are “weak black” companies where there is no overtime, but also no challenge.

B : Because the future outlook has become uncertain under Corona, many people are switching jobs from major companies in order to feel like they were stepping up to a challenge. There was a woman in her late twenties who changed jobs because the company’s brand power was too strong and she wanted to go to a place where she could use her skills more, even though she was in a high flier role in marketing for a major consumer goods manufacturer. A man in his twenties, who entered a company with the highest annual income in Japan in the electrical industry, where the company had a systematic training system, felt it was too slow in having him be involved in actual work and therefore furthering his own development. So he moved to a startup.

Agent C: Most people in their 20s and 30s change jobs in search of reward and growth. The main reasons for changing jobs are that they are not evaluated correctly, that they want more chances to use their own judgement, and that they want to do an important job in the metropolitan area. Recently, many people in finance and insurance are flowing into the IT industry.

Personally, I feel that “a lack of yarigai (rewarding work)” has been increasing mainly amongst people in their 20s and 30s since about 10 years ago. There are various definitions of rewarding work, but the first is whether the work content and compensation are balanced. In other words, whether you are getting paid for your skills, growth, and using your own judgement. Some people find it rewarding just to have a high annual income, such as insurance sales, but that is a minority. Some people choose a company that has a performance-based compensation system such as an annual salary system or a job type system (clear job descriptions). If people are only paid more because they do overtime, then the incentive to work productively and efficiently is lost.

A : Although the number is not large, the switch from major companies to venture companies is becoming apparent in some groups with good educational background and high needs for personal growth. When you are in your the 20s, there are fewer life events such as child-rearing and long-term care, so we recommend choosing a new job that emphasizes the sense of growth.

A : As the lifetime employment system collapses, more and more people are thinking that they must have more transferable skills in the long run. In the past, many people chose their place to work because of the short overtime hours and the number of holidays, but more and more people want to use their own judgement and their brains.

B : The number of people who registered for a job switching service immediately after joining the company seems to have increased more than 20 times compared to 10 years ago.

C : The number of positions for trainee engineers is increasing, and some people from completely different industries want to become IT engineers. There are also intermediary companies that train engineers and dispatch them to each company.

B : Even at our company, the number of people who are pursuing skills is increasing, such as young people who have been doing face-to-face sales have changed to be trainee engineers. Recently, during job change consultations, I sometimes get a person saying “I’m thinking of getting a qualification”, but because of the pandemic there is more need for immediately applicable skills, so getting a qualification does not immediately lead to a job.

Recently, there is an option not only to change jobs but also to have a side job. In the case of a man in his late twenties at a major electronics manufacturer, he was in charge of new business development overseas, but he was not rewarded because the decision-making was so slow, and he gained experience by doing a side job. Since the number of companies that permit it has increased, it is an option to do a side job while having a solid foundation of a main job.

Motivation to work

A : With regard to the provision of growth opportunities, efforts are polarized. IT / web companies are advancing, andin some companies, such as CyberAgent, you can be a president from a young age or get another chance even if you fail. On the other hand, it seems that the manufacturing industry, retail industry, and infrastructure system are lagging behind as a whole, but among them, there are companies such as Aeon and Seven-Eleven Japan that are promoting digital transformation (DX) in retail as well. On the manufacturer side as well, businesses are being reorganized in response to the IoT, finding ways to reduce the number of employees who are just coattail hanging, making the P&L of each department more visible, and creating mechanisms that can properly evaluate whether the business is successful.

A : The theory of “hygiene and motivational factors” by American psychologist Frederick Herzberg is key. First of all, it is important to promote healthy work style reforms so that people can live a healthy life. Keeping the ease of working within the bounds of common sense has the effect of reducing employee dissatisfaction. Certain regulations make sense in terms of reducing overtime hours, which has been difficult to reduce without regulation.

On the other hand, “motivation to work” is important in terms of how much employees can demonstrate their abilities. Productivity does not increase just by focusing on workability. It is important to give employees discretion and responsibility and evaluate them appropriately. Long working hours and no discretion are the most stressful, but long working hours and greater discretion can be less stressful. I feel that discretion, the freedom to use your own judgement, will be one of the keys to working styles in the future. Even within the work style reforms,it may be necessary to shift the axis to “motivation to work”.

I’ve translated the above fairly literally from the Japanese, which is why some of it may sound a little unnatural. But one thing that struck me, even allowing for the rather different ways that opinions are expressed in a more abstract way, is how the role of the manager in both workability and improving team motivation is not directly addressed. If this article had been written in the Western media, there would be much more focus on what you as an individual manager can do. Instead the assumption here seems to be that this is something the company as a whole has to address, in order to avoid being a “weak black” company.

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Pernille Rudlin on the Japan By River Cruise podcast

Pernille Rudlin was the guest on the Japan By River Cruise podcast, hosted by gaijin tarento (foreign celebrities) Bobby Judo (living in Fukuoka) and Ollie Horn (a stand up comedian now based in Bristol, UK).

Pernille talks about her early experiences living in Japan as a child, the current state of UK Japan trade and how where she currently lives, Norwich, is connected to the RingerHut chain of Nagasaki Chinese noodle restaurants via Norwich native and Victorian merchant Frederick Ringer.

Overseas acquisitions by Japanese companies are not to be feared

A record number of British companies have been sold to overseas buyers in the past two months, according to a report from Refinitiv, a subsidiary of the London Stock Exchange. The targets have mostly been undervalued services companies in sectors such as insurance, gambling and security. These acquisitions have been described more as a corporate raid than a positive investment, as many were carried out by private equity firms and also what are known as Special Purchase Acquisition Companies, or Spacs.

Special Purchase Acquisition Companies originated in the USA. A group of investors set up a company, raise money on a stock market, and then look for something to acquire, with the intention of then selling it off at a profit. The City of London is currently discussing whether or not to make itself even more attractive to such companies.

This could end up as just another form of asset stripping, similar to what in Japan would be called Vulture Funds.

Japanese companies have also started acquiring British and European companies again, after a year when it was difficult to do the required due diligence because of the pandemic. Renesas is looking to acquire the UK-German chip design company Dialog, Nishimoto has just announced the acquisition of Sco-Fro, a Scottish importer of frozen fish and noodles and Ricoh has unveiled its 5 year plan, including funds to acquire companies in Europe.

These acquisitions are very different to those carried out by private equity or Spacs of course. According to my research, British companies that have been acquired by Japanese companies over the past five years have, on average, expanded their employee numbers by somewhere between 10 to 25%. Japanese companies try to pick companies that will support their profitable growth overseas. They are also willing to invest in new equipment and other forms of expansion, such as further acquisitions.

The recently announced UK budget provides further incentive for capital investment – a two-year tax break allowing companies to deduct 130% of their investment from their taxable income. This is to cushion the blow of corporation tax rising from 19% to 25% in 2023. Cynics suspect that the timing of this is to coincide with a possible election in 2023, and if the economy has sufficiently recovered, tax cuts will be announced for the future.

In any case, for Japanese companies, low corporate tax rates are not the primary attraction, particularly given Japan’s revised tax haven laws. They should be welcome investors in the UK and the rest of Europe – so long as they remember to communicate that they are looking to grow and invest for the long term, rather than seeking short term profits from restructuring.

This article originally appeared in Japanese in the Teikoku Databank News in April 2021.

Rudlin Consulting and Japan Intercultural Consulting have worked with many Japanese and European companies on post merger integration and corporate culture – please contact Pernille Rudlin for further details.

Japanese companies’ preparations for Brexit pay off

I was relieved to see that the prediction I made in September 2019 that Japanese companies would be well prepared for a hard Brexit has proved to be correct. I would imagine Japanese logistics companies had a large part to play in this.

Japanese car manufacturers have had to halt production in the UK, but this has been more to do with the impact of coronavirus and a shortage of semiconductors than any Brexit related problems.

According to a JETRO survey at the end of last year, the main countermeasure adopted by Japanese manufacturers in the UK to cope with a hard Brexit was to stockpile. Other British companies have stockpiled too, and as a consequence there have not been as many trucks backing up in the UK or France as was feared. But I suspect Japanese companies have also faced few problems because many have adopted the second most popular countermeasure chosen by Japanese manufacturers in the JETRO survey – to reconfigure their supply chains. I estimate at least 30 Japanese companies in the UK have moved their EU supply hubs to the continent over the past few years.

The companies who are suffering the most from Brexit are those smaller British companies who are reliant on supplying EU countries. Up until now they had been able to ship small quantities to EU based customers cost effectively, without any worries about certifications or customs clearance.

Now they have to fill in all kinds of forms and if they are supplying food or livestock, they need health and hygiene certification. Some European logistics companies are refusing to supply the EU from the UK because they cannot cope with the paperwork. They also do not want to send trucks with imports into the UK if they cannot find a load to take back to the EU to justify the expense.

This may all resolve itself eventually, but I suspect that many of the measures that Japanese companies have taken are not temporary and reflect long term trends, as well as the impact of Brexit. For example, the number of Japanese companies manufacturing in the UK has fallen by 22% since 2014, according to Ministry of Foreign Affairs data. This is greater than the 11% overall drop in Japanese companies in the UK. Many of them have converted to sales companies and others have become branches of EU parent companies. As a consequence, there has been a 31% increase in the number of branches in the UK, and a 16% drop in the number of incorporated subsidiaries. Companies who have converted to branches include financial services companies ensuring they can continue to trade in the EU.

Japanese companies are continuing to start up in the UK, but they are mostly in the energy and lifestyle sectors, which are very domestic in orientation. Japanese logistics companies may find that their expertise in international goods trade is more in demand from British companies than Japanese companies in the UK from now on.

This article originally appeared in Japanese in the Teikoku Databank News in March 2021

I decided to stop talking about diversity in Japan – Professor Christina Ahmadjian

The 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 shortage of candidates deemed suitable to fill these roles particularly if companies are also trying try to be as diverse as possible in who is appointed.

The same faces keep popping up, including people such as Professor Christina Ahmadjian of Hitotsubashi University who is currently an external director for four Japanese companies; Japan Exchange Group (the Tokyo and Osaka stock exchanges), Sumitomo Electric Industries, Asahi Group Holdings and NEC . She was also an external director at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries until June of this year.

Her remedy for this shortage of suitable candidates, which she outlined in a recent interview with Nikkei Business, is to hire people from a wider variety of backgrounds. Not just university professors like her, but Japanese women who are working outside Japan, or even having a quota for people under 30 years of age. In her view, even a third may not be enough, because it would mean that the majority are still “salarymen” who have worked their way up the same company all their careers. “The director’s most important role is to appoint and dismiss the CEO. Previously, when I asked a Japanese company what is the difference between the board positions of a managing director (known as joumu in Japan) and a senior managing director (known as senmu), I was told, when a managing director gets older, he becomes a senior managing director. Such a board of directors will not be able to make the top management quit.”

You need people who don’t read the air

External directors need to be able to reject management policies in board discussions. They must also have the mindset that they can quit themselves at any time. You need people who don’t “read the air” the way salarymen directors do.

“Two years ago I decided to stop talking about diversity. I will not give a speech on it and I refuse to be interviewed on it. It doesn’t change no matter how strongly I put the case. If I give a lecture on diversity, people will listen hard and then say “OK, that was good.” I felt it was just entertainment. Japan’s gender diversity is certainly more advanced than before. More companies are introducing maternity leave systems. But why is it so slow. I think “just do it!””

As for diversity in terms of nationality, there are many students who love Japan and want to come to Japan to study and work for a Japanese company. However, after graduating, if they get a job at a Japanese company, after about five years they quit, as they have realised that they can’t sse a future, and their friends at other companies are being promoted faster and have higher salaries. So ofthen they choose to work for a foreign owned company while living in Japan.

1980s uncle management

“Japanese companies are more concerned with their internal talent management than with diversity. So why not hire in Indians and Russians with the necessary IT skills?” Ahmadjian is concerned that what she callls “uncle (ojisan) management” from the 1980s means Japan will not be able to compete globally.

Ahmadjian has lived in Japan for over 20 years, and was herself an office lady at Mitsubishi Electric in the early 1980s. She served tea and wore a uniform. “I really enjoyed it then, but it was a world of old uncles.” “When I asked the top management of a company what is the definition of young, I was told 55 years old. I got them to lower the definition to 50 years’ old.” Japanese-style management may have worked well as a system in the postwar context, but I think it is time to reconsider.”

Pernille Rudlin interviewed on the history of Japanese companies in the UK and Brexit

Pernille 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 the present day.

The video and podcast links are as below

BEERG Byte #32 from Derek Mooney on Vimeo.

The opportunity for Japan to help Europe with its housing shortage

One 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 housing shortage and scarcity of skills across Europe as a reason for their expansion. We have certainly been suffering from a housing shortage in the UK for many years. When I studied the problem 30 years’ ago at university, I remember being told that one issue was not so much a lack of housing, but a lack of adequate housing. There were and still are a lot of older houses, even dating back to the 19^th century, which are not fit for modern day living.

Another issue which has become more acute is that these houses, even if refurbished, are not where people want to live. We still have an economic north/south divide in the UK, thanks to the decline of industry. Big northern towns and cities have no jobs, but plenty of empty, dilapidated housing. Cities in the south are not building enough new housing for the increase in population. As a result, young people are having to share crowded houses and apartments and cannot afford the mortgage needed to buy anywhere.

Building more new houses in those cities is the obvious solution, except that there is a lack of land on which to do so. There was an attempt to allow old office blocks to be turned into apartments, but this resulted in some very low quality, unhealthy housing.

Land is available in the commuter zones outside London, but this has been protected for many years by a so-called Green Belt, which tries to preserve green fields and woodland. Although this may seem a worthy ecological cause, it has mostly been exploited by the residents of those areas who do not like the idea of new houses and newcomers and a consequent hit to the value of their own homes.

I used to live in one of those areas, near a train station which took me directly into central London in 47 minutes. It was right by the M25 orbital motorway, and there was a constant noise from nearby Heathrow and Gatwick airports. I thought at the time that claiming this was green belt and refusing to build more homes in the area was not only selfish, but a denial of reality.

For the first time in the UK, and possibly in the world, air pollution has been ruled as the cause of death of little girl who had asthma and lived in London. I thought back to our time living in the “green belt” and the air pollution we tolerated there. If Sekisui and Daiwa are going to be able to build housing in those areas, their low carbon technology, with effective air conditioning systems, should be much welcomed.

This article originally appeared in Japanese in the Teikoku Databank News

Top 30 Japanese companies in Poland 2021

Poland 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 the IMF, and have a per capita income of $17,000, with Poland not far behind at a per capita income of $15,000. Hungary is even closer, with per capita income of $16,000 and Romania is also catching up, on $13,000. Quality of institutions and other more subjective factors are included in the IMF criteria, so it may be that if some of these countries are judged to have deteriorated under a populist government, then promotion to the premier division will be delayed.

Sharma argues that consistent long term growth is the key to economic success, and manufacturing prowess lies behind this for Eastern Europe. Poland has grown at an average of 4% a year over the past three decades, without a single year of negative growth. Japanese companies do seem to have been attracted to this economic stability. According to our research, Japanese companies in Poland now employ around 53,000 people, making it the fourth largest base for Japanese company employees in the European region after the UK (176,000), Germany (167,000) and France (75,000).

The largest Japanese employers in Poland are indeed manufacturers such as Sumitomo Electric Industries (Sumitomo Electric Wiring/Bordnetze producing harnesses and Sumitomo Riko producing hoses for the automotive industry) and other automotive suppliers such as NGK Insulators, NSG (automotive glass), Toyota Motor, NSK, Bridgestone and Yazaki.

Beer and cigarette manufacturers also feature – Asahi after their acquisition of Polish beer brands Tyskie and Lech, and Japan Tobacco has a factory in Poland manufacturing Winston and Camel. A further vice, chocolate, is also manufactured by a Japan headquartered company Lotte, via their 2010 acquisition of Wedel.

There are some large services sector employers as well – Fujitsu has around 3,000 employees working in its global delivery centres in Katowice and Łódź. However, we estimate around a third of the 200 Japanese companies in Poland have plants there, compared to 16% of the 1000+ Japanese companies in the UK or Germany.

We may still be missing a few Japanese companies in Poland. There are relatively fewer Japanese expatriates in Poland compared to other countries which host larger numbers of Japanese companies. This may cause some underreporting to database survey companies such as Toyo Keizai, which only records around 130 Japanese companies in Poland, and less than 20,000 employees, compared to our estimates of over 200 companies and 53,000 employees. There is still a tendency by Japanese companies to locate their Japanese expatriates in Germany, to manage Eastern European subsidiaries and branches from there. The Polish investment agency says there are 300 companies in Poland employing over 40,000, in 2019.

Cornel Ban, of the Copenhagen Business School, responded to Sharma’s piece by arguing that a high risk of stagnation in countries such as Poland is “baked in”, if they only rely on low labour costs. There is a lack of investment in training and R&D and that “the multinational manufacturing firms that dominate these countries’ export-led growth regimes have few incentives to relocate significant technical innovation systems in the region.” As far as we can ascertain, there are only a few Japanese companies that are conducting R&D in Poland – Canon Ophthalmic Technologies, Fujitsu‘s FQS in computational chemistry systems and Rigaku in thin films and materials.

FREE PDF DOWNLOAD OF TOP 30 JAPANESE EMPLOYERS IN POLAND 2021

Top 30 Japanese employers in Italy 2021

We’ve just compiled our first ever Top 30 for Japanese employers in Italy (see below for updated 2022 version). 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. Tōyō Keizai records 16,500 employees at 270 companies. We estimate it’s more like 50,000 employees at 350 or so companies. We were also wondering what might be behind the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs data showing a sudden rise from 300 Japanese companies in Italy in 2018 to 425 to 2019.

The answer to both puzzles might lie in the fact that the Hitachi group, which was the largest Japanese employer in Italy, acquired various rail businesses from Ansaldo in 2019 and one of its subsidiaries, Hitachi Chemical, acquired FIAMM in 2020. Hitachi has now dropped one rank, to the second largest Japanese employer in Italy, behind the NTT group, as Hitachi Chemical was acquired by Showa Denko in 2020. Another factor is that the NTT group has also grown substantially in Italy recently, mainly thanks to acquisitions by NTT Data.

Other large Japanese employers in Italy are the result of earlier acquisitions: Denso has some of its major manufacturing operations in Italy, deriving from acquisitions from Magneti Marelli more than 20 years’ ago. Denso Thermal Systems S.p.A. is now the regional headquarters for the air conditioning manufacturing business.

Mitsubishi Electric at #5 acquired Italian firm Climaveneta in 2015. Nidec, the 6th largest Japanese employer in Italy, acquired Ansaldo Sistemi Industriali S.p.A. in 2012. Sumitomo Heavy Industries acquired Lafert (electric motors and drives) in 2018.

So it seems likely the underestimation of Italy lies more in acquisitions unaccounted for than a sudden influx of Japanese greenfield investment.

Half of the Top 30 Japanese employers in Italy are also in the EMEA region top 30, so would be expected to have substantial presence in Italy too. The acquisitions detailed above show that Italy’s strengths, as far as Japanese companies are concerned, are in engineering – particularly rail and air conditioning. Judging by the companies that are only in the Italy Top 30, textiles (Toray) and pharmaceuticals (CBC and Takeda) are still attractive sectors for Japanese investment – and of course food – such as the Princes tomato processing plant, owned by Mitsubishi Corporation.

New 2022 edition

The 2022 Top 30 has just been published – it can be downloaded from our website here.

We can provide more detail on the 85 companies within the Top 30 – each company name in full and employee total per company (a truer indicator of size of the company than turnover in our opinion) for £9.99 – please email us for a PayPal invoice.

Top earning foreign executives at Japanese companies in 2021

Seven 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 that Nissan got themselves into such a twist about their CEO Carlos Ghosn’s pay.

No Nissan executives appear in the Top 30 this year, unsurprisingly. The number of executives paid over ¥100m has risen for the first time in two years, and Hitachi has the most – with 15 executives including the British head of the rail division, Alistair Dormer. Dormer is not, however, being paid more than his Japanese boss, Mr Higashihara, although this has happened in the past at companies such as NSG.

The financial group MUFG has 11 executives earning over ¥100m and Mitsui, the trading house conglomerate and Daiwa Securities both have 9. Tokyo Electron and SoftBank both have 8 executives earning over ¥100m. SoftBank’s Simon Segars, British CEO of ARM is the highest paid executive of a Japanese company, earning ¥1,880m (around $17m) and SoftBank’s COO Marcelo Claure is the third highest paid, with SoftBank’s Rajeev Misra, Ronald Fisher, Miyauchi Ken and Goto Yoshimitsu at #6, #7, #12 and #21 respectively.

FANUC, Daikin, Toyota Motor, LIXIL, Sony, ENEOS and Mitsubishi Electric all have 7 executives earning more than ¥100m. I would be surprised if the latter was in the rankings next year, however, given its current difficulties.

Other high earning foreign executives include Christophe Weber at #2 and two other executives at Takeda Pharma, Didier Leroy at Toyota Motor (#4) , Bijoy Mohan at LIXIL (transferred with LIXIL’s Grohe acquisition) and Stefan Kaufman at Olympus.

So if you want to be a high paid foreign executive at a Japanese company, work for a Japanese company that has a high proportion of its business overseas either through organic growth (Toyota) or more likely through acquisition – Hitachi Rail, Takeda, LIXIL, Olympus, SoftBank.

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