Kenji Matsuo: Leading Japan’s Life Insurance Pioneer

Kenji Matsuo is the president of Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Company. He has held this position since December 2005. Prior to reaching this position Matsuo has served as managing director and general manager of the Real Estate Department at Meiji Yasuda. He has is also a director.

Matsuo leads an organization that is over 100 years old. The company was founded in the early 1880s as the Yasuda Mutual Life Insurance Company by entrepreneur Zenjiro Yasuda and made it part of the Yasuda zaibatsu.  A key event happened on January 2004 when Yasuda Mutual Life Insurance Company merged with Meiji Mutual Life Insurance Company to create the Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Company.

The firm today is Japan’s third-largest private insurer. Meiji Yasuda Life boasts of being the market leader in the group insurance sector. It has over 38,000 employees and has headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. Meiji Yasuda Life has 74 regional offices, 18 group marketing departments, and 980 agency offices.  The firm also operates internationally with subsidiaries, an affiliate and offices in nine cities around the world.

Even by international standards the company is huge.  At the end of fiscal year 2011 the firm had life insurance in force of $2.563 trillion and assets of $360 billion.

Companies this size must tread carefully and look for greater revenues which at the same time are deemed safe. When it does make a move it is in large proportions. It recently announced plans to buy foreign bonds as a hedging move and the amount was at a cool $5 billion.

Matsuo and his team must also look at new markets given the changing demographics in Japan.  In an interview in the early part of 2013, he stated that the company would increase the number of residential rooms in its nursing care facilities to 1,000 in four or five years.  Given Japan’s graying population Meiji Yasuda Life made this move to better serve its customers while at the same time have a synergic effect on insurance sales products.

The company may be one of the oldest and largest but Matsuo knows he can’t sit on company laurels but must constantly adjust to changing times.

 

Pailin Chuchottaworn: A National Responsibility

Pailin Chuchottaworn has a big responsibility if not a national responsibility as head of Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT).  The company was founded on December 29, 1978. This was the period of the second world crisis of petroleum shortages. PTT’s primary mission was in expediting to procure adequate oil for domestic consumption.

 The company’s motivation was to seek additional indigenous petroleum reservoirs for the benefit of the country.  PTT has been able to increase the energy security of Thailand.  With the Ministry of Finance as the largest shareholder the company was eventually listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand in 2001.

From being domestically focused PTT is now venturing overseas to seek higher growth while at the same time fostering national energy security.

Hence, unlike other energy company heads whose main concern is the company itself, Chuchottaworn has to also be conscious about national responsibility that comes with running this company which did inherit some advantages as having been basically a government entity.

Chuchottaworn has been up to the challenge. He is eager to move the company forward and knows the there will be more pressures for competition in the future. He has been in the lead to invest in technology and having a “green company.

Chuchottaworn was appointed president and CEO on September 2011. Prior to his appointment he already had senior positions within the company including heading a number of its subsidiaries.  He holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Chemical Engineering (Hons.) from Chulalong University in Thailand and a Masters and PhD in Chemical Engineering both from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan.

Steven H. Collis: Success In The U.S.

When we think of globalization most often we think about the products that can now go from one country to another. We sometimes forget about the human talent movement that has been taking place. People of all nationalities have been moving in different countries to make their own success stories.

One person who has had a great amount of success is Steven H. Collis. Steven is from South Africa. He completed his articles of clerkship with Price Waterhouse and received his Charter Accountancy license in 1986. This is the South African equivalent of a Certified Public Accountant. Before he emigrated to the U.S., Steven served as a member of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

He was a Principal and served as General Manager of Sterling Medical in Irvine, California. Stevens then joined ASD. He was General Manager from 1994 to 1996. With good performance he became Executive Vice President of ASD Specialty Healthcare, Inc. from 1996 to September 2000.

His next assignment was as Senior Vice President and President of ASD Specialty Healthcare Inc., a segment of Bergen Brunswig Corp, from September 2000 to August 2001. The year 2001 also saw the merger of Amerisource Health Corp. with Bergen Brunswig Corp. which was a $7 billion union of two former competitors forming AmerisourceBergen Corp.  

The merger did not stop Steven’s steady climb up the corporate ladder. He founded a subsidiary, AmericasourceBergen Specialty Group. This subsidiary works with manufacturers to deliver specialty products such as biotechnology drugs, plasma derivatives and cancer treatments to physicians and patients. He served at this subsidiary, based in Dallas, Texas as President from September 2007 to September 2009. 

Steven then became Executive Vice President and President of AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp., which is the biggest subsidiary of the company with revenue of $60 billion. He was promoted to President and COO of AmerisourceBergen Corp. in November 2010.

With the retirement of his predecessor, Steven became the President and CEO of the company in July 2011.  He heads a company that provides wholesale drug distribution and related services which had revenue of $79.5 billion in 2012.

Steven has had a very successful career in his adoptive homeland; another example of how globalized the world has become.

Yusuf Alireza: Running Noble

Yusuf Alireza is the CEO and Executive Director of Noble Group. He is a company outsider having been the co-president of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Asia –excluding-Japan unit and a member of the firm’s Global Management Committee prior to joining Noble. Alireza is one of the exceptional few who have a joint undergraduate and graduate degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

He began work at Goldman in New York in 1992. Then Alireza moved to London in 1997 where he rose through the ranks eventually becoming Head of EMEA sales and structuring efforts. His move to Asia happened in 2008 when he was assigned to Hong Kong to head the Asia Pacific securities division of Goldman.

Alireza was appointed to his current role on April 2012. The Noble Group is the biggest listed commodity traders by sales in Asia which is based in Hong Kong and listed in the Singapore exchange. It even had bigger sales than Marubeni Corporation of Japan and other commodity trading firms there which are centuries old as against Noble which is not even a thirty year old firm.

His coming into the company is to set things right. Noble posted first quarterly loss in almost 14 years in November 2011 due to the slump in its cotton and carbon-trading businesses. It also experienced a string of resignations from top executives including the previous CEO.

Alireza has at his hands a company that is one of the largest in the world. With assets and resources available he brings sophistication in the areas of finance and risk management that will hopefully set the course for Noble to be a centuries old company itself like its Japanese rivals.

Li Lihui: Leading One Big Bank

Li Lihui is the Vice Chairman and President of Bank of China. This is one of the big four state-owned commercial banks of the China. It is one of the largest bank lenders in China and is also one of the biggest banks in the world. Thus it takes an exceptional amount of talent to be able to run this bank let alone being chosen to head it as in any government controlled institution there may be some degree of public politics involved in choosing who runs it.

Li though has good credentials. He was born in 1952 in Fujian Province, Putian City and joined the Communist Party of China in 1975. Li graduated from the Economics Department of Xiamen University in 1977 and earned a Doctorate in Economics from the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University in 1999.

Li has solid banking experience having held numerous banking positions. He started his career at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) in his native Fujian Province. There he served as director and Party member.  From January 1989 to July 1994 Li held various positions at ICBC such as Deputy General Manager of the Fujian Branch, Chief Representative of the Singapore Representative Office and General Manager of the International Business Department.  He was an Executive Vice President of ICBC from July 1994 to September 2002.

As he was part of the governing political party Li had the experience of serving as Deputy Governor of Hainan Province from September 2002 to August 2004. After t that period it was back to full time banking for Li; he has been the Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors and President of the Bank of China since August 2004.

Bank of China is a one-of-a- kind bank, since its founding in February 1912 to 1949 it served as the country’s central bank, international exchange bank, and specialized international trade bank. In 1994, it became a stated-owned bank after having been a specialized foreign exchange bank. It was incorporated as Bank of China Limited in August 2004. Li led the bank as it was listed on the Hong Kong Exchange and Shanghai Stock Exchange in June and July 2006 respectively.

Li heads China’s most internationalized bank which is still majority-owned by the state government.

Antonio Brufau Niubó: Outstanding Spanish Executive

Antonio Brufau Niubó is the Chairman and CEO of Repsol, the largest oil company in Spain and one of the 10 largest in the entire world. He is credited for the turnaround of the company. Antonio did this by using new technology and reducing debt. New technology has resulted in finding reserves off Brazil in the Atlantic Ocean.

Antonio has led Repsol into active explorations outside of Spain including having discoveries in Morocco and Sierra Leone. Repsol has also been investing heavily in Bolivia with commitments to invest $640 million in the country.  It does business in 30 countries on five continents. More than half of the company’s 40,000 workforce are employed outside of Spain.

Born in 1948, Antonio earned an economics degree from the University of Barcelona. He started his career at Arthur Anderson and became Partner and Director of Audit. He then joined Spanish bank “la Caixa” as Deputy Managing Director.

Antonio has been a busy executive all his career being Managing Director of “la Caixa” Group from 1999 to 2004 and Chairman of the Gas Natural Group from 1997 to 2004. He became the chairman of Repsol in 2004.

Antonio is a member of the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT), the Advisory Board of CEIM Confederación Empressarial de Madrid – CEOE, and other important and prestigious organizations.  He is one of the best executives to come out of Spain and has also proven his global business savvy.

René Oberman: Telecommunications Man

While many top executives have become successful at running companies in different industries René Oberman has been happy working in the telecommunications field. If you are focused and interested in a particular field then chances are you’ll be successful just like Oberman.

In the case of Oberman he has been extremely successful as he is the current Chief Executive Officer of German telecommunications giant Duetsche Telekom AG. He has held this position since November 2006.

Oberman was born in 1963 in Dusseldorf, Germany. He started his career working as a business trainee at BMW AG. The he decided to go off on his own and founded a company in 1986 which marketed and distributed telecommunications equipment and provided technical services. He had now joined the telecommunications industry and has never left.

Hong Kong multinational Hutchison Whampoa took notice of his company and eventually bought it in 1991. The resulting entity became Hutchison Mobilefunk GmbH and Oberman was Managing Partner. He was the CEO from 1993 to 1998. This firm would then become one of the first network-independent service providers for digital mobile communications in Germany.

Oberman then solidly got himself involved in the German telecommunications industry when his joined Deutsche Telekom as Director of Sales and Member of the Board of Management, T-Mobile Deutschland GmbH in 1998. He then became the CEO of this company in 2000. The following year Oberman assumed more international responsibility for the European business of T-Mobile International AG & Co. KG as Board Member of the European Operations and Group Synergies.

He was the CEO of T-Mobile International AG & Co. KG from 2002 to December 2006. Oberman was also Member of the Board of Management of Deutsche Telecom AG. During his tenure Deutsche Telecom continued is mobile business growth and was one of the world’s leading mobile operators.

Oberman assumed the CEO role of Deutsche Telecom AG in November 2006. While his current contract with the company ends in 2016, he made a surprise announcement at the end of 2012 that he would be leaving the company at the end of 2013. Oberman wants to take on a more entrepreneurial pursuit as head of Dutch cable operator Ziggo starting January 1, 2014.

While he’ll be joining another company it’s still very much in his chosen industry of telecommunications.