Our investment professionals, with high business capabilities and expertise beyond the domain of investment funds, achieve steady and satisfactory results in fund operations, provide thorough management support, and exercise exit generation abilities.

Japanese companies have grown in tandem with expansion of the Japanese capital market and with the development of the Japanese financial market. They have improved their business structures to survive a series of economic crises, including an oil shock and the collapse of the bubble economy. In the meantime, the Japanese economy now faces new difficulties of a deflationary economy, a rapidly aging of population, low economic growth, diminishing international competitiveness, and functional failures in global financial systems. Development of Japanese small-to-medium-sized companies stands for the Japanese economy itself. On the back of slack business by major Japanese companies, small-to-medium-sized Japanese companies, as well as Japanese venture companies, are expected to serve a more important role than ever before as the driving force of the Japanese economy. Our investment professional personnel, with full knowledge of the historical development of Japanese small-to-medium-sized companies and venture companies, cooperate with our consulting team who has abundant experience in studying the development process and problems of nonpublic Japanese companies and in providing brilliant solutions. Through such cooperation, we aim to find new, promising nonpublic companies, execute investment, support them in management, and approach exit generation.

We maintain an investment organization and implement team operations determined to produce the highest performance from our management resources through the strenuous efforts of all personnel. The number of investment target candidates is more than 1,000 annually. After a strict screening process, candidates are narrowed down to about 40% of the initial total, which we discuss in our investment project meetings. Finally, no more than 4%-5% of the candidates are selected as feasible projects after strict due diligence of several months. In our venture capital division, we organize investment terms and conditions as the lead investor for about 70% of all investment projects. We also dispatch directors to more than half of the projects. In our private equity division, we have established our own investment styles with a focus on small and medium projects, of which the aggregate market value is 15-20 billion. This amount accounts for about 80% of the Japanese M&A market value. As a result, the investment return on the three existing projects since 2001 ranges from 25% to higher than 60% (before deduction of contingent fees for some　projects). We have already sold 11 assets out of 19 as of the end of FY 2008. (Some assets out of 11 have been partly sold.) The average tenure (of assets completely sold) is about 2.9 years. Our exit strategy focuses on trade sales. The sales to strategic investors, such as listed companies, accounted for more than 80% of all sales transactions in the previous term. In our secondary investment division, where we purchase the equity of existing prelisted investment funds (including associations) as a secondary fund, we manage full-scale operations of secondary funds. The average return on the three existing projects since 2003 is 86% (before deduction of contingent fees for some　projects), which is one of our favorite outcomes. Each of our investment groups is responsible for the profitability of the assigned funds. The team members are rewarded by incentives based on fund operation performance and not on a transfer during the tenure.

We have steadily produced successful results through our own highly specialized hands-on investment and through the provision of management support. We aim to secure profitability in equity investment through consistent and strict screening of investments, close monitoring and management assistance after investment. At the same time, our ultimate goal is to satisfy client demands sufficiently through high performance. Furthermore, all of the directors and employees are ready to concentrate our energies on our investment operations in all aspects and in the respective fields as a professional. We make strenuous efforts to contribute to the development of the investment business market, while remaining aware of our social responsibilities.