Nicholas Benes

BDTI CEO, Proposer of Japan's Governance Code

• The Board Director Training Institute of Japan

Mr. Benes is is the Representative Directors of The Board Director Training Institute of Japan. He received his B.A. in political science from Stanford University, and a JD-MBA degree from UCLA. He then worked at JP Morgan for 11 years and went on to lead a pathbreaking M&A advisory boutique in Japan, JTP Corporation. He is an inactive member of the bar in California and New York. In the past, he served as a twice-elected Governor of the ACCJ, Chair of the ACCJ’s FDI Committee and FDI Task Force, and as a member of the Experts Committee of the Japan Investment Council, an advisory committee to the Japanese Cabinet on FDI policy. He has also served as an independent outside director at Alps Mapping, the listed company Cecile Ltd., Livedoor Holdings (post-scandal); and Imagica Group (6879). He currently serves on the board of Advantest (8657) In 2010, he was a member of the Financial Services Agency’s Corporate Governance Liaison Committee, which had been formed to provide private sector input to the Ministry of Justice and the Legal Affairs Advisory Council regarding amendment of Japan’s Company Law. In 2013, he proposed that the creation of a corporate governance code be included in the LDP’s growth strategy, to be implemented under the auspices of the FSA. He then advised members of the diet and the FSA, with regard to the drafting process and the content of Japan’s first corporate governance code. He also later seeded a variety of other reforms, including inclusion of principles about diversity and corporate pension governance in the governance code.