< The 2015 All-Japan Research Team
Masahiro Shibano
Citi
First-place appearances: 0
Total appearances: 1
Team debut: 2015
In third place is Masahiro Shibano, who earns his first appearance on this roster. The Citi researcher has been focusing clients’ attention on the increasing corporate push to boost shareholder returns as the nation’s precision instruments developers move on from prioritizing dividend stability in the wake of the global financial crisis in 2008, as well as the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan and flooding in Thailand. Three domestic office equipment makers — Brother Industries, Hoya Corp. and Konica Minolta — are among the players that have made great strides in this area, he says, but he is most impressed with Fujifilm Holdings Corp. Management of the Tokyo-based concern, known primarily for its cameras, announced in November a three-year business plan that includes a 7 percent return on equity target and what Shibano, 34, calls an “innovative” setting of quantitative targets to return cash to shareholders for the first time in its history. “Fujifilm had been regarded as being passive about shareholder returns, but the clarity offered on its aim to beef them up in this medium-term plan strikes us as a major change,” he explains. Shibano joined Citi in 2005 as an equity research associate. He has since reported on small-cap, construction, trading company and materials stocks and assumed his current coverage in 2009. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from the University of Tokyo.