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I find it difficult to approve Proposal No. 3. All of the candidate directors are men, and considering that women make up half of the world, I doubt such a board could fully grasp what women want and manage to broaden the market. Further, I personally do not use a computer, a cell phone or a smartphone. I wonder how your plans take into consideration the diversity of users, including such people like myself. |
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Tatsumi Kimishima (President): First, regarding the fact that there are no women among the candidate directors, let me state that we choose directors who we believe can best help steer our company regardless of gender, age, or nationality. In addition, we do not intend to introduce a mandatory retirement system for our board members. Come the end of this general meeting, there will be no women directors or executive officers, and the only non-Japanese executive officer will be Reginald Fils-Aimé (president of Nintendo of America). Be that as it may, our company has many female employees in active roles, and our overseas subsidiaries have many female staff members. Our management team is keen to absorb the opinions of those employees to develop products and run the company in ways that reflect both the female viewpoint and a global viewpoint. We want all our consumers, including our many female consumers, to enjoy our products. From that perspective, it is extremely important going forward to gather a variety of views from many different people for our product development. As I mentioned, there are no women among the candidate directors this time, but we intend to do our utmost to foster greater participation of women for the future growth of Nintendo. |
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If you look at the balance sheet, Nintendo seems like a blue-chip company, maybe the best or the second best among listed Japanese companies. But the share price seems more indicative of the current reality. The share price fluctuations are the risks to be taken by the investors, and the company management should not be responsible for them, but I believe that leadership has a duty to try to increase corporate value. As such, I want to know whether the company plans to get on board with the new generation of virtual reality (VR). Even if you do not plan to enter the VR field, there is still a lot that needs doing. And also, looking at the board, I feel that they are too old. I'd like to see you leverage younger people as much as possible, perhaps by promoting them to executive officers. They might not be able to manage like Mr. Yamauchi, but we’d like to expect the value of the company to improve. |
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Kimishima: Let's talk about VR first. We are well aware that other companies are developing games and game-related products using VR technologies, and that consumers are interested in all of this. I cannot say anything specific at this time, but understand that we also consider VR to be a promising technology, and we are conducting research with much interest. And increasing corporate value will require action on many fronts. This includes our continually investigating projects that make use of our intellectual property (Nintendo IP) and developing products that improve the quality of life (QOL Project). We are working our hardest now to prepare for the planned release of our new game system codenamed NX, next March. We plan to increase corporate value at a steady pace by bringing new projects to fruition. Now that you mentioned about “executive officers,” let me say that we are now introducing the executive officer system in order to clarify responsibilities for managerial decision-making, supervision, and the execution of business. By appropriately delegating authority to the executive officers and increasingly utilizing people who can execute specialized tasks, I am certain that our executive officers can meet new challenges head on. I ask for your continued support as we tackle a variety of challenges, backed by this new system, in our efforts to boost corporate value. |
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If the UK follows through and leaves the EU, what impact will that have on Nintendo, and what do you plan to do about it? |
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Kimishima: The "leave" vote has destabilized stock markets and financial markets. The decision to leave the EU and the ongoing preparations for doing so will gradually lead to a stabilization in financial markets and exchange rates, but it is clear that the yen is trending strong for now. The book value of Nintendo's assets denominated in foreign currencies will take a hit compared to last fiscal year-end due to foreign exchange losses if the strong yen continues, and this could have an impact on our earnings. We will need to keep a close eye on the way events unfold. Another conceivable impact of the Brexit vote is that Nintendo has a base in the UK and sell goods from there. Tax systems, product safety standards and rules, information privacy, and all sorts of other agreements are established by the EU for all of Europe, and at this point in time nobody knows how those agreements would change if the UK were to leave. For now, what we need to do is closely watch developments and prepare appropriate measures. |