Six postings in one company, each with a different question

Mandate

Raise returns above the cost of capital, answer the exchange's request on capital efficiency and decide the future of the founding business.

Outcomes

• Disclosed altered certificates on 2,140 resin lots within six days of confirmation and rebuilt quality governance across nine plants.
• Sold 33 of 41 cross-held positions for ¥49.3 billion and bought back ¥36.2 billion of shares.
• Raised return on equity from 4.4 to 8.6 per cent; price-to-book ratio moved from 0.61 to 1.07.
• Sold 66 per cent of the Toyama chlor-alkali business for ¥18.6 billion with all 1,080 employees' terms protected for three years.
• Approved a ¥26 billion first phase in Arizona, which began supplying a customer's fab in August 2026.

Decisions in context

The nomination advisory committee proposed me as president in 2022, and the general meeting that June elected me a representative director. My mandate from the board was broad, but the exchange's request in early 2023 made it specific: show that our capital earns more than it costs, or change the portfolio until it does. Before that could begin, the Ichihara certificate disclosure in November 2022 tested whether the company would tell customers an uncomfortable truth quickly, and it set the tone for everything after. The four years since have been organised around a single table showing return on invested capital by business and plant. It led to the cross-shareholding sales, the public test for Functional Resins, the phased Arizona plant and the sale of control of the Toyama business. Eleven executive officers report to me, and I meet our five outside directors without the executive team twice a year.

Reason for the move

Current role. I intend to hand over at the June 2028 general meeting and leave the board at the same time.

Mandate

Grow the Electronic Materials business with the advanced-node fabs while keeping qualification and quality ahead of customers' audits.

Outcomes

• Grew segment sales from ¥86.9 billion to ¥118.4 billion over three years.
• Qualified our highest-purity cleaning chemistry at four new customer fabs.
• Approved a ¥14 billion capacity expansion at Tainan, completed in 2023.
• Opened a shared analytical centre at Yonezawa serving all three plants.

Decisions in context

I returned from Taiwan in April 2019 to lead the Electronic Materials Company, an internal division with its own P&L. The business was growing quickly with customers moving to finer process nodes, and the risk was that capacity and qualification would fall behind demand. I divided the work into three parts: qualify our highest-purity cleaning chemistry at new fabs, add capacity at Tainan where customers were nearest, and centralise ultra-trace analysis at Yonezawa so that all three plants measured the same way. Segment sales grew from ¥86.9 billion to ¥118.4 billion. I joined the board in June 2020, which gave me my first experience of approving matters outside my own business, including the internal audit reports on Ichihara that I later wished I had pressed harder. The nomination advisory committee proposed me as president in early 2022.

Reason for the move

Proposed by the nomination advisory committee and appointed president by the board.

Mandate

Double capacity for the most advanced grades and prepare the subsidiary for local leadership.

Outcomes

• Doubled capacity for advanced-node grades within three years.
• Cut the time to answer a customer quality query from five days to under one.
• Appointed the subsidiary's first Taiwanese plant manager and handed him a plant with no open customer audit findings.
• Raised sales from about ¥19 billion to about ¥31 billion.

Decisions in context

Tainan was the most demanding posting of my career. Our customers' fabs were twenty minutes away, and their quality engineers expected answers in hours. A Japanese subsidiary that referred every question to head office could not keep up, so I moved analytical authority to the plant and set a rule that every customer query would receive a substantive answer within a day. I chaired the subsidiary's board and reported to the head of the Electronic Materials Company in Tokyo. We doubled capacity for the most advanced grades, and sales rose from about ¥19 billion to about ¥31 billion. I learnt working Mandarin and, more usefully, learnt how slow a Japanese parent can look from outside. My last act was to appoint the subsidiary's first Taiwanese plant manager. He still runs it, and I regard that appointment as the best decision I made there.

Reason for the move

Recalled to Tokyo to lead the Electronic Materials Company.

Mandate

Prepare the company's medium-term plans and bring discipline to investment appraisal.

Outcomes

• Wrote two medium-term plans and introduced a hurdle rate for all investments above ¥1 billion.
• Prepared the investment case for the Pyeongtaek plant, approved in 2012 and opened in 2014.
• Compiled the company's first full review of 46 cross-held stakes and proposed selling 30; six were sold.
• Led the supply-chain review after the March 2011 earthquake.

Decisions in context

I came to Tokyo in July 2010 knowing plants and customers and almost nothing about capital markets. Corporate planning taught me to read our company the way an investor would. I wrote two medium-term plans, introduced a hurdle rate for every investment above ¥1 billion and prepared the case for our plant at Pyeongtaek in South Korea, which opened in 2014. After the March 2011 earthquake I led a review of single-source materials and plants without a backup, which changed how we stocked several critical inputs. My most important piece of work was one nobody had asked for: a review of every listed company whose shares we held. There were 46, worth about a fifth of our net assets. In 2014 I proposed selling thirty. The president agreed to six. I learnt that a correct proposal can still be early, and that being early has a cost.

Reason for the move

Asked to lead the Taiwanese subsidiary, our largest overseas operation.

Mandate

Raise purity and consistency to the levels customers' fabs required and pass their audits without findings.

Outcomes

• Built an analytical laboratory able to detect metallic impurities at the levels customers measured.
• Reduced customer audit findings from an average of seven per audit to fewer than two.
• Raised plant output by about 60 per cent without a lost-time injury in four years.
• Restarted production after the regional power interruption in March 2011 through a team trained to act without head-office instruction.

Decisions in context

The Yonezawa plant had grown out of the acid project I worked on at Toyama, and I arrived as deputy manager in April 2003, becoming plant manager three years later. Customers' auditors visited constantly, and they asked about sampling, filtration and container cleaning in ways our own managers had stopped doing. We built a laboratory able to see what their laboratories saw, and we stopped arguing with their results. Average audit findings fell from about seven to fewer than two, and output grew about 60 per cent. I left for Tokyo in mid-2010, but the training we had put in place was tested the following March, when the earthquake interrupted regional power. My successor and the section chiefs restarted the plant safely without needing anyone in head office. That is the result I am proudest of, even though I was no longer there.

Reason for the move

Brought to head office to run corporate planning.

Mandate

Run electrolysis efficiently, then develop hydrochloric acid pure enough for semiconductor customers.

Outcomes

• Reduced power consumption per tonne of caustic soda by about 4 per cent through cell and brine changes.
• Developed the purification route that made Toyama acid the feedstock for our first electronic-grade products.
• Qualified the first electronic-grade acid with two Japanese semiconductor makers in 1999.
• Wrote the process specifications later transferred to the Yonezawa plant.

Decisions in context

I joined Hatsuseki in April 1989 and spent my first six years on the electrolysis cells at Toyama, where my grandfather and father had worked. The job was mostly about electricity, which was the largest cost, and about brine, whose impurities shortened the life of the membranes. In 1995 I moved to the works' development department to help purify hydrochloric acid for semiconductor customers, and from 1998 I led the team of five that did it. We learnt to measure metals in parts per trillion and to doubt any result we could not repeat. Our first electronic-grade acid was qualified by two Japanese chip makers in 1999, and the process specifications we wrote became the basis of the Yonezawa plant. These fourteen years gave me both the chemistry and the conviction that a limit agreed with a customer must be one the process can keep.

Reason for the move

Sent to Yonezawa to help run the plant that commercialised the acid work.