New Year's Message from President Akihisa Fujinuma

I would like to extend my sincere wishes to everyone for a Happy New Year.

While some concerns have arisen over a possible slowdown in the Japanese economy that up until recently has been recovering at a rapid pace, I see a steady resilience in the economy. Corporate earnings have been showing good results because of management reforms implemented over the past ten years. Most noticeable are the actions of leading companies in establishing new growth strategies based on a growing cash flow. Consequently, the number of projects that are aimed at developing new businesses and products as well as implementing merger and acquisition has been increasing. In pursuit of our goal of “Dream up the future,” we strongly endorse these moves.

Particularly, in the financial field, where moves towards market reorganization have already been underway, the government last month announced a financial reform program. We believe this year will see the launching of a greater number of new strategies in this field than in the past. By drawing upon our experience in developing many diverse systems, industrial research and business expertise, NRI intends to take a dynamic approach in providing packages and services for the new growth fields in the financial sector.

Accelerated trends towards environmental changes and globalization have also been seen in the distribution, service and manufacturing industries. To properly address these trends, it is fundamentally important to optimize business activities and to keep ahead of any changes by making the best use of information technology. Based on our extensive accumulation of capabilities in this area, NRI will accelerate the expansion of our business activities centered on presenting proposals for business innovations and providing outsourcing services.

As part of our core objective of the navigation of future society and the development of solutions, the NRI Group is firmly committed to supporting the efforts of our customers as they originate new business activities and implement growth strategies. For this purpose, we will continue to build up our knowledge and strive to maintain our high level of professionalism. I look forward to taking the lead in meeting these new challenges.