People: JSR names first non-Japanese leader in major rejig

Tokyo – JSR Corp. is shifting its focus to overseas under the stewardship of new CEO Eric Johnson, the first non-Japanese national to lead the Japanese materials company.

Johnson joined JSR Micro Inc (USA) in September 2001 and has served as an officer within the Japanese company since 2011. He took over as the director and president of JSR North America Holding earlier this year and was appointed as group CEO in June.

With his appointment, Johnson has become the first non-Japanese national to lead JSR, the company said in its social corporate responsibility report published at the end of September.

The new CEO has been named as part of an organisational rejig, in place since the general shareholders’ meeting in June 2019.

In the new layout, former president Mitsunobu Koshiba has taken the position of representative director and chairman while Nobuo Kawahashi appointed as president and chief operational officer.“We must shift the axis of our business to overseas markets, and therefore I see ‘global governance’ as a priority issue for JSR,” said Kawahashi in an interview published in the CSR report.

JSR, he added,  aims to “uncover unique regional needs and reinforce its global-level governance” under the new CEO “who is keenly familiar with circumstances both in Japan and abroad.”

Some 60% of JSR’s revenue currently comes from overseas, and one-third of its employees are non-Japanese nationals, according to Kawahashi.

“I personally believe society will undergo a major transformation from around the mid-2020s. In the chemicals industry, ‘digitalisation’ will spark dramatic changes in the way we do business.” Kawahashi said. 

Support by digitalisation, Kawahashi said his strategy was to pay particular attention to “individualisation” and “regionalisation” of demands. “No longer will things be invented in developed countries and then brought into developing countries. Instead, various types of innovation will be born from unique regional needs,” he noted.

JSR manufactures elastomer and resin products, including styrene butadiene rubber (SBR) and butadiene rubber (BR), as well as emulsion products, such as thermoplastic elastomer and SBR latex.