The first president from outside the founding family, and handing the company to a Marubeni man (2021)

The side that called in an outsider, and the side that was called

The year the company was handed over closed with a net loss of ¥13.0bn — larger than the ¥6.7bn posted after the global financial crisis. In that year Chairman Tadano Koichi chose as his successor Ujiie Toshiaki, who had come from Marubeni only two years before; he later explained that “what I wanted was someone young, an outsider, a fool.” Behind the decision of the founding family’s sixth-generation head to end family succession himself lies, it seems, a judgement that the job of welding the acquired companies into one would not proceed in the language of the founding family.

The work entrusted, though, was less about expanding than about folding things up. Development in India was halted, the Chinese joint venture liquidated, a German plant closed, small-machine production returned to Japan. North America grew and sales for the year to December 2025 reached a record ¥349.4bn, while European operating losses ran on for seven periods. Ujiie wrote on taking office that his shelf life as an outsider would not be long; that date has passed and Europe is still not in the black. What was expected of the man brought in from outside will be measured on precisely that point.