News about Japan

[Tom MoodyParticipant]

Mitsuru Claire Chino is managing executive officer at Itochu.

For years, many in Japan saw the country’s general trading companies, known as sogo shosha, as obsolete artifacts of a bygone era in the country’s economic development.

These days, though, the sogo shosha are trendy. American investor Warren Buffett has taken significant stakes in five of the largest sogo shosha, helping push the Nikkei 225 index back to a level unseen in decades. He previously told Nikkei Asia that he was “very proud” of these investments and saw them as very similar to his own Berkshire Hathaway.

Since the 1990s, the sogo shosha have shifted from a focus on trading to directly owning and running businesses as equity holders of companies and projects, which indeed has made them more comparable to U.S.-based Berkshire Hathaway.

Today the groups have a huge global presence as strategic investors in projects and entities in a range of industries, including energy, minerals, chemicals and food. Each one is like a combined logistics provider, financier, investment firm and consulting company.

The sogo shosha now find themselves in a unique position to address the multiple complex challenges ….

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Warren-Buffett-is-right-to-be-proud-of-Japan-s-trading-companies

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