Minoru Makihara
Profile
Performance in office
Tenure
Tenure
Background
He joined Mitsubishi Corporation in 1956, served as President and then Chairman of Mitsubishi International Corporation in the United States, and after returning to Japan rose from Senior Managing Director to President. Chairman Shinroku Morohashi based his choice of successor not on sales results but on "the makings to change the company with an international sensibility," and Makihara's experience running an overseas subsidiary appears to have fit that criterion.
Selection
He succeeded Shinroku Morohashi as President. After earning stable profits from energy development in the 1970s, Mitsubishi Corporation had sought a way forward in merchant banking during the bubble era, but earnings from trading margins swung with the Japanese economy, and there was a growing sense of crisis within the company that it could not rise again as things stood. Minoru Makihara described the company's situation as "a fork in the road between the dinosaur and Homo sapiens."
Initiatives
Unrealized losses on tokkin and fund trust investments were dealt with in his first year, resulting in an extraordinary loss of about ¥66.0 billion. In the same year Executive Vice President Shinichiro Ota, who had led the finance department, stepped down. In his second year he began reexamining business investments and cleaning up unprofitable businesses, and extraordinary losses swelled to about ¥160.0 billion over the two years. Organizationally, a reorganization into a virtual head office structure removed the sales officers' rooms from the executive floor, and a new meeting to set the direction of management was created while the number of officers with representative authority was halved. In the United States, Aristech Chemical, acquired in 1990, turned its first profit in 1995, but before that, in August 1994, the company had extended an additional $500 million loan and removed its former management.
Career
Career
Mitsubishi Corporation
| Date | Position |
|---|---|
| 1992 | President |
| 1997 | Stepped down as President |