The Finance Monthly M&A Awards 2021

F i nance Month l y M&A Awards 2021 - 67 - - JAPAN - Many members of Frontier Management Inc. (“the Company”) at the time of its foundation, including Co-Presidents Shoichiro Onishi and Masahiro Matsuoka, were from Industrial Revitalization Corporation of Japan (“IRCJ”) (*). They acquired a great deal of knowhow on operations for management consulting, business revitalization and M&A through many projects at IRCJ. To facilitate the execution of operations while solving various issues in management consulting, business revitalization and M&A projects, it is necessary to arrive at a total optimum solution by combining complex and advanced expertise as well as knowhow in a variety of areas including business, finance, accounting and law. Generally, companies with needs for services of management consulting, business revitalization and M&A establish a special in-house team to execute the said operations and complement necessary expertise by individually hiring different companies and groups, such as a management consulting company, an investment bank, an accounting office and a law office for each project. However, it is not necessarily easy to facilitate the execution of operations for management consulting, business revitalization and M&A in a unified manner, because multiple experts need to cooperate while maintaining close communication. This is because each expert belongs to a company or group with its own organizational policy and circumstances in different locations. Mutual understanding could also be deemed insufficient in some cases. Therefore, a special team of companies needs to perform the difficult task of arriving at a total optimum solution by communicating with the expert group in each area and combining individually presented partial optimum solutions to be considered comprehensively on their own. In order to solve this issue, Shoichiro Onishi and Masahiro Matsuoka, the founders of the Company, came up with the idea of collecting experts with diverse backgrounds, such as a management consultant, an industrial analyst, a business expert including those from business corporations, an M&A specialist from an investment bank, and institutional experts such as a lawyer, a certified public accountant and a certified tax accountant in a single consulting firm. They thought that if they could provide various management support services in one stop by finding experts in each area that meet the required needs as a single team from the in-house collection of experts, they could not only dramatically increase the convenience of customer companies, but also provide total optimum solutions to solve complex and advanced management issues facing the customer companies. About Masahiro Matsuoka After working at Nomura Research Institute, Ltd. and Barclays Bank PLC, Masahiro Matsuoka joined UBS Securities Japan Ltd. (now UBS Securities), in 1997, and was subsequently appointed concurrently as Head of Equity Research and Managing Director in 1999. He joined the Industrial Revitalization Corporation Japan in 2003 and was appointed as Managing Director. Mr. Matsuoka co-established Frontier Management Inc. in 2007 and currently serves as Co-President. Mr. Matsuoka was appointed Chairman of Frontier Management (Shanghai) Inc. (a wholly- owned subsidiary) in 2012. While at the Industrial Revitalization Corporation Japan in 2003, Mr. Matsuoka was involved with business reorganization plan proposal and in the reorganization process of regional department stores, such as Tsu-Matsubishi Co. and the Usui Department Store Co. He was also involved in the reorganization plan proposal phase of Kanebo, Ltd. in 2004, and assisted as a director in the company in its execution of the plan.