Jean-Marc Gilson, who was named CEO of Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings effective April 2021, appears via video link at a news conference in Tokyo, Oct. 23.
Photo: Peter Landers/The Wall Street Journal
TOKYO—Nearly two years after Tokyo prosecutors arrested the country’s best-known foreign executive, Nissan Motor Co. ’s Carlos Ghosn, a major Japanese company has made the rare choice of a foreign executive as its CEO.
Mitsubishi Chemical MTLHY 1.02% Holdings Corp. said Jean-Marc Gilson, 56, currently head of a French food-ingredient maker called Roquette, would take over as its chief executive on April 1, 2021.
He will become one of the only non-Japanese executives atop a major Japanese company apart from Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. ’s Christophe Weber, who is French.
“ “I understand it’s a big challenge not being Japanese.” ”
Mr. Ghosn, who came to Nissan in 1999 and was credited with rescuing the car maker, was arrested in November 2018 and later charged with financial wrongdoing, which he denies. He escaped to Lebanon last December, but another former Nissan executive, American Greg Kelly, is standing trial in Tokyo on charges of helping Mr. Ghosn. Mr. Kelly says he is innocent.
Messrs. Ghosn and Kelly have said their arrests would discourage foreign executives from coming to Japan for fear that internal company disputes could be turned into a criminal matter.
Mr. Gilson took pains to differentiate his experience from Mr. Ghosn’s, pointing to his five years in Japan in the 2000s at a Japanese-U.S. joint-venture chemical company.
“For me, Japan is not new,” Mr. Gilson said at a news conference in Tokyo, where he appeared by video link from France. “My wife is Japanese so I have more experience with Japanese culture.”
He added, “I understand it’s a big challenge not being Japanese.” When asked about the Ghosn case, he said, “I have no anxiety.”
Like Mr. Ghosn, Mr. Gilson has a multinational background. He said he was born in Belgium and now holds U.S. and French citizenship, and he said his four children live in the U.S.
Mitsubishi Chemical is part of the Mitsubishi group, a loosely affiliated network of Japanese companies that share historical ties and sometimes cross-shareholding relationships. Mitsubishi Chemical’s products include plastics and materials used in electronics parts such as batteries.
Most Mitsubishi group CEOs spend their entire careers at a single company. The current Mitsubishi Chemical CEO, Hitoshi Ochi, joined the company in 1977.
Mr. Ochi said he was concerned that Mitsubishi Chemical’s market capitalization, less than $9 billion as of Friday’s close, was low relative to its annual revenue of more than $30 billion.
Mr. Gilson said it was imperative to raise the company’s profitability by getting more international customers, saying more than half the company’s sales still come from its home market. He said he planned to shake up Mitsubishi Chemical’s portfolio and unload some assets, but “you can only do that if there is good value to sell.”
In Japanese companies, it is common for the current CEO to pick a successor, but Mitsubishi Chemical said the board’s nomination committee made the choice by hiring a foreign executive-search firm and interviewing seven candidates including four non-Japanese candidates.
Write to Peter Landers at [email protected]
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
