Forbes Releases New Rich Japanese List

[Mulboyne]

[floatr][/floatr]Bloomberg: Mori Tops Softbank's Son on Forbes List of 40 Richest Japanese
Akira Mori, chief executive of closely held real estate developer Mori Trust Co., overtook Softbank Corp. founder Masayoshi Son to become Japan's richest man, according to Forbes Asia's June 18 issue. Mori, 69, benefited as Japan's average land prices rose for the first time in 16 years, pushing up his net worth to $5.5 billion in 2006 from $4.9 billion a year earlier, Forbes said. He rose to first place from fifth in the magazine's annual Japan's 40 Richest list. Softbank's Son, 49, who topped last year's list, saw his net worth slip to $5.45 billion from $7 billion and his rank fall to second, the magazine said. The market value of Softbank, Japan's third-largest operator of wireless services, has fallen 44 percent since January 2006. Hiroshi Yamauchi, former chairman of Nintendo Co., Japan's second-biggest maker of video games, was the list's biggest gainer, the magazine said. The 79 year old rose 11 places to No. 3, with a net worth of $4.8 billion. Nintendo shares have tripled in value since January 2006 on sales of its Wii consoles and DS Portable players...more...

Akira Mori is not the Roppongi Hills man, That's his brother, Minoru. You have to take these numbers with a pinch of salt. Forbes also lists the chairman of a construction company who's fortune has apparently doubled since last year which is extremely unlikely. More probably, they missed a chunk of assets last year.

[Mulboyne]

Forbes has unveiled its new list:

[floatr][/floatr]Forbes: Japan's 40 Richest
Japan's 40 wealthiest businesspeople are worth $89.9 billion, up $10.7 billion from last year...The biggest gainer was the country's new No. 1, the retired and now largely low-profile Nintendo chairman, Hiroshi Yamauchi, whose net worth soared $3 billion in the past year and has tripled since 2006...Close behind him is last year's richest member on the list, property developer Akira Mori...Three newcomers debut, including the list's youngest member, Mixi's 32-year-old founder, Kenji Sahara. He is the first under-40 member of Japan's rich list since 2005, when former Internet entrepreneur Takafumi Horie last appeared on the list...Other newcomers are Yokyu Kanazawa and his brothers, who together own Sanyo Bussan, a $2 billion (sales) maker of pachinko machines; and steel-parts magnate Hiroyuki Inoue, who grabbed the last spot...Two dropouts were Toichi Takenaka, whose Takenaka construction company's consolidated profits fell by two-thirds for fiscal 2007 because of fewer orders and higher costs, and Kenshin Oshima, head of consumer loan outfit SFCG, whose market value was halved. Sega Sammy's Hajime Satomi just barely makes the list, as his company's stock also tanked...The average age of the country's 40 wealthiest is 66. That makes the group quite a bit older than the youthful tycoons of China, India and even South Korea. Indeed nine octogenarians rank among the top 40, three more than two years ago. Only three females qualify for this year's top 40: Hiroko Takei, who inherited her fortune from her late husband; Chizuko Matsui, whose husband turned her grandfather's brokerage firm into a leading online securities firm; and Keiko Erikawa, chairman emeritus of videogame developer Koei. Erikawa, the list's only self-made female, shares a $720 million fortune with her husband, who co-founded the company with her...more...

[Mulboyne]

And again:

Forbes: Japan's 40 Richest

At least someone is making money these days. Japan's retail tycoon Tadashi Yanai, whose Uniqlo stores sell affordable apparel, has added $1.4 billion to his wealth to become Japan's richest person for the first time. He is now worth $6.1 billion and has moved up to No. 1 from No. 6 last year, becoming the fifth person in as many years to take the top spot in Japan. Yanai's good fortune aside, most of Japan's richest lost money in the past year as the country slipped into a recession, business confidence hit its lowest level in 34 years, and the Nikkei stock index dropped 45% since its June peak. Japan's 40 Richest are now worth a combined $69.5 billion, down from $89.9 billion in May, when we published the 2008 rankings. Even the soaring yen, which recently hit a 13-year high against the U.S. dollar, couldn't pull up these dollar-based fortunes. Twenty-eight of the 40 richest lost money, including everyone in the top 10, excluding Yanai. Nintendo's Hiroshi Yamauchi, whose net worth fell by $3.3 billion, slipped from first to third place. Kazuo Okada, who founded pachiko and slots company Aruze, and Yasumitsu Shigeta, who runs telecom provider Hikari Tsushin, have both lost half their fortunes since our last rankings. Another 13 list members declined 25% or more.

Still, there were outperformers in addition to Yanai, including Masahiro Miki, who runs shoe retailer ABC Mart; Chizuko and Michio Matsui, whose online company, Matsui Securities, is doing well in a volatile environment; and the Kinoshita brothers, whose struggling lender became a subsidiary of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial. The year's richest newcomer is Internet entrepreneur Yoshikazu Tanaka. He debuted his social networking site Gree on Mothers Market for small high-growth stocks in December. The stock is trading at two-thirds above the listing price, with a higher market cap than rival Mixi, run by Kenji Kasahara, who just makes the cut at No. 40 with a net worth of $480 million. Also joining the list are the Tada brothers, who share a stake in discount drug chain Sundrug, and Hirokazu Sugiura, founder of Sugi Pharmacy. Akio Nitori, who founded discount home furnishing retailer Nitori, returns to the list after a two-year hiatus as his company racks up sales for its low-priced products, many of which are cheaper than those sold at Sweden's Ikea. Another returning retailer is Muneaki Masuda who founded Tsutaya, one of Japan's leading movie-, music- and game-rental chains.

A few individuals are holding their own in troubled industries. The fortune of real estate mogul Minoru Mori (brother of No. 4 Akira Mori) stayed flat at $1.1 billion. Ryoichi Jinnai's Promise, Japan's third-largest consumer lender, cut costs and allied with Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group to survive sinking credit markets. His fortune is down only $200 million, to $1.5 billion. Six from the 2008 rankings missed the cutoff despite the fact that it was $235 million lower than last year. Yoshitaka Fukuda dropped $1.5 billion to $250 million as the stock of his consumer finance company, Aiful, crashed. Ryuji Arai, whose Bic Camera restated earnings and may be fined, lost two-thirds of his fortune. Unlike our billionaires' rankings, which highlight individual fortunes, Japan's top 40 includes numerous family fortunes. The list was compiled using shareholder and financial information obtained from the families and individuals themselves, stock exchanges and analysts. Stock prices and exchange rates were locked in on Feb. 6. Private companies were valued based on comparison with prevailing price-to-earnings or other financial ratios.

1. Tadashi Yanai
2. Kunio Busujima
3. Hiroshi Yamauchi
4. Akira Mori
5. Masayoshi Son
6. Eitaro Itoyama
7. Hiroshi Mikitani
8. Nobutada Saji
9. Hiroko Takei
10. Takemitsu Takizaki
11. Masatoshi Ito
12. Masahiro Miki
13. Kinoshita brothers
14. Katsumi Tada
15. Kanbei Kokubu
16. Ryoichi Jinnai
17. Soichiro Fukutake
18. Shigenobu Nagamori
19. Minoru Mori
20. Han Chang-Woo
21. Chizuko & Michio Matsui
22. Kazuo Okada
23. Tetsuro Funai
24. Yoshikazu Tanaka
25. Yokyu Kanazawa
26. Yasuhiro Fukushima
27. Akio Nitori
28. Nobutoshi Shimamura
29. Hajime Satomi
30. Shoji Uehara
31. Kazuo Inamori
32. Tadahiro Yoshida
33. Tada brothers
34. Yasumitsu Shigeta
35. Hirokazu Sugiura
36. Minoru & Yuji Otsuka
37. Shoichiro Toyoda
38. Toichi Takenaka
39. Muneaki Masuda
40. Kenji Kasahara

[Greji]

And again:

One of my many bosses made the list, but don't tell Oklahoma that...

[Mulboyne]

Forbes has updated the list here in tandem with a profile of Gree founder Yoshikazu Tanaka:

Asia's Youngest Self-Made Billionaire

Yoshikazu Tanaka is a student of others' success. The founder of social networking site Gree has designed his offices to evoke the minimalist "Apple and Nintendo white." Meeting rooms are named after the hallowed ground of American Internet giants. One is dubbed Sunnyvale after the location of Yahoo's headquarters; another is Mountain View, home to Google. "It's kind of Zen," explains the 32-year-old entrepreneur, dressed in an open-neck shirt, hip-hugging jeans and sneakers.

He also closely watches the moves of his Japanese rivals, particularly social networking sites Mixi and DENA. Every Monday morning at ten the young chief executive presides over a staff meeting at his headquarters in Tokyo's swank Roppongi Hills neighborhood, in which he psychs up his employees to "aim for number one" and overtake their competitors.

In one respect Tanaka has already bested them. Thanks to Gree's soaring stock, which doubled in 2009, Tanaka, who owns 51% of the company and has sold $170 million worth of shares since the December 2008 offering, is worth $1.6 billion, enough for him to rank No. 18 among Japan's 40 Richest. Mixi's founder, Kenji Kasahara, ranks No. 33, with a net worth of $720 million, while DENA's Tomoko Namba misses the cut with a fortune of less than $500 million.

Tanaka is one of only three billionaires in Asia under the age of 35 and the only one to have made his own money. (China's Yang Huiyan, 28, got her stake in real estate developer Country Garden from her father, who runs the firm. So, too, did Li Zhaohui, 28, also from the mainland, who inherited his steel firm from his late father.) In fact the only younger self-made billionaire in the world is Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg, 25.

Gree's stock has taken off thanks in part to the firm's meteoric growth (it was recently ranked Japan's fastest- growing tech company by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, with 2,636% revenue growth over three years). Gree now has 15 million users, up from 8 million a year ago. It overtook number two DENA in September and is now closing in on Mixi, which has 18 million users but is adding fewer customers a month. "We will pass it within six months," says a confident Tanaka. He says he expects to double subscribers to 30 million soon.

Gree has set itself apart by focusing on delivering fun, easy mobile games. New subscribers get a big-eyed manga-style avatar in underwear. They can then shop for everything from clothes like fancy hats to fashionable hairdos to accessories like fishing rods or food that can then be used in games such as virtual fishing, gardening and grooming of online pets. (DENA offers avatars, accessories and games, too, but doesn't yet combine all three.) The willingness of Gree's members to pay for their virtual trinkets, which cost a couple of dollars a pop, helped boost sales two and a half times to $75 million for the three months ending Sept. 30, 2009; 80% of its revenues came from these online accessories. "The Japanese like playing games," says Tanaka, who as a kid was an avid computer game player. "[Gree] is light and easy," adds Akira Suzuki, an analyst at Tokai Tokyo Securities.

Tanaka first became interested in a digital society after reading American futurist Alvin Toffler. He was particularly inspired by Toffler's 1980 book, Powershift (which he read as a junior high school student) that explored the social repercussions of a shift to an information society. He browsed the Internet for the first time in 1996 while visiting the U.S. Three years later he graduated from Nihon University with a degree in politics and economics and did a short stint at an Internet subsidiary of Sony. He then spent a few years working on online auctions for fellow billionaire Hiroshi Mikitani, who runs Japan's online shopping mall, Rakuten.

"As a student he made Web sites and banner advertisements. At Rakuten he was creating blog systems. He started this social network as a hobby, and it became popular, so he decided to become independent," notes Hiroshi Yamashina, an analyst for Nikko Citi.

In 2004 Tanaka cut loose from Mikitani--the two keep in contact--to work on his social network. He named it Gree, after six degrees of separation, derived from the psychologist Stanley Milgram's concept that everyone is at most six steps or connections away from any other person on Earth. The company's logo is a hexagon. (The company has no ties to the mainland China air-conditioning manufacturer Gree that has appeared on FORBES ASIA's Fab 50 list.)

Tanaka started Gree at Netage, the same incubator in Tokyo where Kasahara started Mixi. Like Mixi, it initially set out to create a network of friends online. But Tanaka's upstart struggled against Kasahara's site, a factor that led him to mobile social gaming. One investor who bet early on him was Yoshihito Hori, a venture capitalist who has a stake in Netage and also runs one of Japan's leading business schools. Hori met Tanaka in 2005 and bought a 3.6% stake in the firm through his Apax Globis Japan Fund. He describes Tanaka as "an achiever able to respond to change quickly" who had a business model that "could make money." (The fund cashed out in September with a hundredfold return.)

Gree got a major boost when it formed an alliance with telecom firm KDDI in 2006; the telecom still owns 7% of Tanaka's company. This allowed people to access Gree's site from the home page of KDDI's mobile phones, which helped push up the number of Gree subscribers. Gree got access to more potential users in 2007 when NTT DoCoMo and Softbank let its customers access the site. (These telecoms now carry his rivals as well.)

The decision to go mobile has made all the difference. Nine out of ten Gree users access the service from their cell phones compared with only two out of three for Mixi. Many of them play the games on their phones to pass time on their long commutes on packed trains. In that sense Gree competes as much with tech outfits--Sony's PSP and Nintendo's DS--as with the other SN sites, but unlike the game players, Gree's subscribers can play games with other commuters on other trains in Japan.

That Japan leads the world in broadband mobile connectivity has clearly benefited Tanaka by allowing his customers to easily play his games on their phones. Of 114 million cell phone subscriptions in Japan, 102 million are 3G. That penetration rate is way ahead of the U.S., where only 70 million handsets are the latest generation.

The games, which Gree develops in-house, are also proving to be quite profitable. Gree's net income for the latest six months was $39 million, slightly more than DENA's profit and four times that of Mixi, which relies on advertising for nearly all of its sales. Operating margin at Tanaka's venture is 57%, compared with 36% at DENA and 30% at Mixi. That means Gree has more to spend on advertising, including a recent TV campaign.

No wonder that these two rivals are moving on to Gree's turf. As of October Mixi uploads mobile social games; DENA is one of its suppliers. DENA, with about 250 games already available, is readying to launch social games similar to Gree's. Tanaka says he is unfazed but nonetheless thinks a fishing game by DENA is going too far. In September he filed a lawsuit against DENA, accusing it of stealing his game. Still to be fought in court, he wants the judge to award him $4.2 million in damages, force DENA to pull its game and to apologize. DENA isn't backing down. "The facts will come out in court," said DENA spokesman Tetsuhiro Kaneko.

Meanwhile, Tanaka is starting to look for ways to export his games, conceding that he may need to find partners in targeted locales. When he does make the jump overseas, he won't just face the likes of Facebook or MySpace, he will also run into DENA, which bought American social gaming site IceBreaker, and Mixi, which opened a Chinese site in October 2008 dubbed Mixiu. "It will be difficult for Gree to succeed overseas as a platform," reckons Keiichi Yoneshima, an analyst at Barclays in Tokyo.

In the meantime, Tanaka has to watch his back at home and remember that success, and wealth, can often be fleeting. After all, Kasahara, now 34, was a billionaire briefly when he was 30 but hasn't been since. Indeed, Tanaka's offices may have the Zen white interiors of Apple and Nintendo, but he is still a long way from creating a lasting global brand.

[dimwit]

God I love all the shadowy pachinko/loan sharks magnates who come sans photo. But than again looking at some of the photos you'd that with all their money some of these guys could afford a decent haircut and maybe a smile training course.

[Catoneinutica]

One of my many bosses made the list, but don't tell Oklahoma that...

From the article: "Six from the 2008 rankings missed the cutoff despite the fact that it was $235 million lower than last year."

Hang in there, Greji, you'll be on the list one of these years yourself at this rate.