Midterm corporate strategy 2021

Mitsubishi Corporation has conceived its latest management plan, entitled “Midterm Corporate Strategy 2021: Achieving Growth Through Business Management Model.” It will take effect from fiscal year 2019.

The new strategy will lay the groundwork for MC’s sustainable growth over the next three years, recognizing how worldwide economic and geopolitical trends are putting pressure on enterprises to evolve their business models. Such trends include the US administration’s America-First agenda, China’ One-Belt, One-Road policy and the so-called “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” the hallmarks of which are advancing digital technologies and the evolution of platform businesses.

Under Midterm Corporate Strategy 2021, MC will be implementing a framework of portfolio-based decision making to give it a more holistic view of industry and help it to determine which fields it needs to be more proactive in and where it needs to replace its assets based on changes in its operating environment.

To optimize its portfolio, MC will analyze its businesses from a number of unique vantage points. In addition to considering quantitative information such as the scale of a business and the amount of capital deployed, MC will be examining the business in terms of region, industry presence and MC’s level of management engagement.

MC’s objective is to identify Potential Growth Sources, nurture them into Growth Drivers, and then add more value to them until they evolve into the company’s next generation of Core Businesses, and fundamentally review those that have reached stages where it will be impossible for MC to add further value. Those reviews will include the appropriate reallocation of capital.

Naturally MC intends to continue this cycle, but in the future it will be more conscious about maintaining its ideal portfolio’s shape and balance as it does so.

Some of the more specific measures that MC will be taking are described below.

MC will be setting up a Business Creation Office in its Corporate Strategy & Planning Department, and appointing General Managers for Business Creation to all of its Business Groups, which will allow the company to be even more proactive in identifying Potential Growth Sources and building Growth Drivers.

MC will also be appointing a Chief Digital Officer (CDO) and setting up a Digital Strategy Department under that officer’s charge. To address the rapid digitization of industries, the company will be assigning General Managers for Digital Strategy to each of its Business Groups.

MC will be reforming its HR system to: (1) Ensure that employees gain the right experience to become management professionals earlier in their careers; (2) Be more meritocratic to ensure that the right people are assigned to the right positions; and (3) Utilize management talent more widely and effectively throughout the MC Group.

MC’s main objectives in HR are to continuously produce highly skilled management professionals who are capable of exceling in different fields, and to foster reciprocal growth between the company and its employees. To achieve those objectives, MC will endeavor to swiftly identify the ideal candidate for each position, create a stronger meritocracy, implement share-based compensation and introduce a multilayered evaluation framework.

By continuously growing its Business-Related Segments and becoming more competitive in Market-Related Segments, MC will aim for 900 billion yen in consolidated net income and an even higher double-digit ROE in fiscal year 2021.

MC will also continue to flexibly increase its dividend in line with its earnings growth (i.e. extend its current progressive dividend scheme), and aim to increase its dividend payout ratio from 30% to 35% in the future.