MBA Program

President & CEO
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc.
Tokyo, Japan

The 2005 merger of Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group (MTFG) and UFJ Holdings created Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc. (MUFG), the world's largest financial group in terms of assets under management. The president of the new enterprise is Nobuo Kuroyanagi, who had been with MTFG, the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi (BTM), and their predecessors for four decades and president since 2004.

In the globalized financial services sector, MUFG's asset base certainly makes it a major player. Yet Kuroyanagi has more ambitious plans, noting that MUFG lags the other global leaders in profitability.

Global ambitions

His goal is to bring MUFG into the top five global financial services institutions as measured by market capitalization. To do so, he is determined to take advantage of the rapidly evolving business environment for Japanese financial institutions as well as projected growth in asset size.

As an example of the new business opportunities he sees in Japan, Kuroyanagi mentions the emergence of changing attitudes toward personal financial assets.

“In Japan, most people now hold their assets in bank deposits. In fact, the total amount of deposits is said to be about 1,400 trillion yen, which is significantly higher than is typical in the United States or European countries,” he explains.

“However, we perceive a clear trend of individuals seeking higher returns by investing in more diversified assets. Also, the Japanese government is encouraging people to shift their financial behavior from ‘saving’ to ‘investing.’ ”

Kuroyanagi believes that these behaviors will spread, creating significant new business opportunities for banks.

To foster change, Kuroyanagi says that “The financial services industry today requires that participants provide a wide variety of services — both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ services — to individuals in the general public as well as to corporations. A comprehensive management perspective is necessary to address these expectations.”

Developing a broad perspective

Kuroyanagi credits MIT Sloan, together with his tenure at Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry and at BTM”s Systems Division for giving him a broad view of social and industrial priorities and objectives.

He believes that an MIT Sloan education is valuable not only for the academic benefits, but also for the long–term impact of the experience on a person's professional career and overall life.

“From 2000 through 2002, I was a managing director and the CEO for the Americas at BTM, where I was responsible for all of the bank's business activities in North and South America,” Kuroyanagi elaborates.

“It was my first time working in the United States, and I believe that my time at MIT Sloan prepared me to deal effectively with a group of people who had extremely diverse professional and cultural backgrounds.”

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