Guessing what was on the mind of a Mitsui & Co chief executive used to be easy enough. As the most resource-focused of Japan’s titanic sogo shosha general trading houses, copper prices, iron ore supply and the geopolitics of energy were corporate life and death.
As he approaches his fourth year in charge, Tatsuo Yasunaga’s preoccupations include mayonnaise deployment at McDonald’s, Earth-mapping micro-satellites, Indonesia’s appetite for yoghurt and whether a convoy of trucks can cross the US without drivers.
He is not running a grand old mansion of salarymen, he insists from an office overlooking the grounds of the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo, but a hothouse of entrepreneurs: “We are finding new markets . . . industry-wise, business-wise, penetrating new frontiers.”