Japan M&A Awards
11 June 2020, Shangri-La Hotel, Tokyo
2021 Judges
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Gerard Adams is originally from Sydney, Australia, and is currently based in Tokyo, working as General Manager, Corporate Planning at Kyowa Hakko Bio, a subsidiary of Kirin Holdings. Gerard started his career as a corporate lawyer, completing his Honors research in Ho Chi Minh City before going on to work in law firms in Sydney, Perth and Tokyo. His practice focused on advising large Japanese companies investing in Australia, including time working in the Sydney offices of Mizuho Corporate Bank and Mitsui & Co. In 2009, he changed career by joining the Strategic Planning Department of Kirin Holdings in Tokyo, where he worked on multiple acquisitions in Oceania, South East Asia, North and South America. In 2018, Gerard moved to Boston to manage several Kirin-acquired businesses in the US. In 2020, he returned to Japan to take up his current role at Kyowa Hakko Bio, where he is contributing to Kirin’s strategic growth in Health Science. Gerard was a founding member and Chair of the Japan-Australia Business Cooperation Committee Future Leaders Program and is currently a member of the Executive Council of the Australia & New Zealand Chamber of Commerce in Japan. He is married with two daughters and enjoys music, reading and travel.
Toshihiro Hagiwara got involved in the principal investment at Tokyo office of US based private equity funds called Cerberus Capital Management for thirteen years. His role was not only to lead due diligence and formulate business plan at the underwriting, but also to unlock and enhance value through operational improvement and asset divestiture toward the exit.
Prior to joining Cerberus, Mr. Hagiwara started his business career at Japanese M&A boutique firm called Recof, where he was engaged in an M&A advisory role for seven years and helped the clients execute their growth strategy, transform or divest underperforming business.
Mr. Hagiwara is currently a Managing Director and CFO at the listed company of Tokyo Stock Exchange, leveraging his expertise in finance, accounting, tax as well as pre and post M&A activities. He is also in charge of the investor relations and holds more than 300 meetings per year, mainly with the foreign institutional investors.
Mr. Hagiwara is Certified Public Accountant in Japan (CPA), and received Master of Economics from The University of Tokyo (Majored in Finance) and Master of Business Administration from University of Michigan, Ross School of Business.
In Joon Hwang
Senior Managing Corporate Officer, CGIO (Chief Global Investment Officer), Z Holdings Corporation
August 1992: Joined Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
August 1998: Joined Credit Suisse (currently Credit Suisse AG)
January 2003: Joined Samsung Securities Co., Ltd.
June 2004: Joined Woori Finance Holdings Co., Ltd.
March 2007: Joined Woori Investment & Securities Co., Ltd.
August 2008: Joined NHN Corporation (currently NAVER Corporation) as CFO
November 2008: Director, CFO, NHN Corporation (currently NAVER Corporation)
December 2008: Director, LINE Corporation
April 2015: Director, CFO, LINE Corporation (currently A Holdings Corporation)
May 2017: Representative Director, Co-CEO, LINE Ventures Corporation
September 2018: Representative Director, CEO, LINE Financial Asia Corporation Limited (to present)
February 2021: Director, A Holdings Corporation (to present)
February 2021: Director, CFO, LINE Corporation (to present)
March 2021: Senior Managing Corporate Officer, CGIO (Chief Global Investment Officer), Z Holdings
Corporation (to present)
April 2021: Director, Chairman, Z Venture Capital Corporation (to present)
Mr. Kita joined Advantage Partners in 2003 and leads all activities for the Japan Buyout team. Mr. Kita has also directly led many investments including Actus, MEI/Nippon Conlux, CommunityOne, Interac and Katitas. He currently serves as a Director on several investments including Wavedash, Ionic, United Precision Technologies, MP Kitchen, Net Protections, Material Group, Yaruki Switch Group, Cosmolife and Dental Holding.
Prior to joining Advantage Partners, Mr. Kita was at Bain & Company Japan and focused on projects in the auto, finance, telecommunications, food products, trading houses, and healthcare sectors. Mr. Kita holds an undergraduate degree from the Faculty of Economics, the University of Tokyo, and an MBA from University of California, Berkeley.
Hideki is Director and Executive Officer and General Manager of Business Development at T&D United Capital and is concurrently General Manager of Business Development at T&D Holdings.
He leads the group's M&A, strategic investment, and relevant activities at T&D Holdings and T&D United Capital (T&D Holdings’ investment unit). Hideki joined T&D in 2019 and prior to that, worked at Tokio Marine for more than 30 years and held several senior roles in relation to M&A and overseas businesses of the company, including being seconded to Japan Post Insurance as Executive Officer, and Overseas life insurance business, including M&A.
Hideki earned an LLM degree from The University of Texas at Austin, and graduated from The University of Tokyo, Faculty of Law.
Naoya Seguchi has led M&A Advisory Team with Mitsubishi Corporation since he returned to Tokyo in June 2019. Prior to the current role, he served as CFO of Mitsubishi International Corporation (New York) from 2016 to 2019, and as Head of Finance at Mitsubishi Corp.-UBS Realty (Tokyo), a J-REIT management company, from 2013 to 2016. He started his career in 1993 with Sanwa Bank (currently MUFG Bank) and spent 12 years there. For the latest five years at Sanwa, he executed many M&A deals at Sanwa Securities (currently Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities). In 2005, he joined Mitsubishi Corporation where he supported its business groups to structure and execute full range of transactions, including acquisitions, strategic investments, joint ventures, divestitures, and related financing.
Kenji Uesaka is an Executive Officer in charge of Group Structured Solutions at Shinsei Bank.
After graduating from the Faculty of Economics at Gakushuin University in 1992, he joined the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, Ltd. (currently Shinsei Bank, Ltd.) in the same year.
Since 2006, he has been engaged in LBO finance for M&A projects mainly by PE funds at the bank's Specialty Finance Division. Since then, he has worked on a number of M&A finance deals, including M&A finance for strategic investors and cross-border M&A financing, with a focus on LBO finance, Share Finance, and mezzanine finance for domestic companies sponsored by PE funds.
In 2019, he was appointed Executive Officer of the bank. Since then, in addition to M&A finance, he has been promoting structured finance business, which is Shinsei Bank's focus area in the fields of Project Finance mainly in renewable energy in Japan and overseas, Ship and Aviation finance, and Venture Business,. He also serves as a Director at Shinsei Corporate Investment.
Norie Hata is chief correspondent for Dealreporter, an Acuris company, based in Tokyo. At Dealreporter, a sister product of Mergermarket, Norie analyzes live, expected and special sit situations of Japan’s major M&A deals. She has written numerous stories on such high-profile deals as Toshiba Memory, Hitachi Kokusai Electric, Asatsu-DK, PanaHome and Alpine Electrics.
Norie joined Dealreporter in 2005. Previously, she was a senior correspondent for Thomson Reuters’ IFR where she covered mainly fixed income and banking consolidation, and Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei)’s English language newspaper.
Mai Mizuta heads editorial content direction and strategy for Mergermarket and Dealreporter in Asia-Pacific. She oversees the management of seven bureaus across Asia, leading a team of dedicated journalists covering mergers and acquisitions, private equity, and event-driven and special situations. Mai, who is also concurrently Japan Bureau Chief, is responsible for private equity, news, and origination coverage in Japan.
Noz joined Mergermarket in July 2008 to run financial services, TMT and private equity fields. He has covered non-core divestitures by Japanese blue-chip firms, cross-border M&A as well as PE buyouts and exits. Prior to joining Mergermarket, He had worked for various news services and foreign banks, including International Financing Review (Thomson Reuters’ capital market magazine) as well as AFX News (financial news unit of Agence France-Presse) to cover a variety of topics ranging from Japanese corporates global fundraising via equities and syndicated lending, Japanese government bonds, corporate earnings to macro-economic news. At Mergermarket, he has broken scoops on Calsonic Cansei, Hitachi, Panasonic, Takeda Pharmaceutical, Toshiba, JT, Fujitsu, Accordia Golf, Wanbishi and Clarion.