Forbes: Uniqlo founder Tadashi Yanai is Japan's wealthiest man

Singapore — The collective wealth of Japan’s 50 richest tops $112 billion in the latest Forbes’ Japan Rich List. A weakening yen has made exports cheaper and Japanese stock markets more attractive, boosting the wealth of the country’s leading companies and the fortunes of tycoons who have been expanding overseas. Tadashi Yanai occupies the top spot once again at $15.5 billion, a 46 percent gain from last year. The founder and CEO of Asia’s largest apparel company, Fast Retailing, known for its Uniqlo casual clothing shops, has continued to expand the brand outside of Japan. The company also owns the Theory and Helmut Lang brands. No. 2 on the list is Nobutada Saji, with a net worth of $10.7 billion. He is the third generation to run the family drinks business, Suntory. He has plans to list the company’s nonalcoholic drink and food businesses, seeking to potentially raise $3 billion. Since he took control of the company in 1999 he has also focused Suntory on overseas acquisitions such as his 2009 acquisition of France’s Orangina Schweppes Group and New Zealand’s Frucor Beverages Group. Masayoshi Son makes the list at No. 3 with $9.1 billion. Founder of Asia’s leading internet venture, Softbank, Masayoshi Son is in the process of acquiring 70 percent of Sprint Nextel for $20.1 billion, a deal which is being reviewed by US regulators. He is also leading the company into wind and solar power generation projects in Japan and a Paypal partnership to promote small and medium-sized businesses in Japan. Hiroshi Mikitani, Chairman and CEO of Japan’s biggest e-retailer, Rakuten, is ranked No. 4 on the list with a net worth of $6.4 billion. He continues to acquire companies to grow his global offerings and challenge behemoths such as eBay and Amazon. He has spent more than $1 billion over the past several years acquiring Buy.com in the US, Play.com in the UK, Canada’s tablet-maker Kobo and a $100 million stake in photo-sharing site, Pinterest. Rakuten is also benefiting from deregulation, with bans on online drug sales and election campaigning being lifted. Other big gainers include Chizuko Matsui and Michio Matsui (No. 21, $1.4 billion) who are benefiting from an increasing interest in day trading; the stock of their securities firm is up 85 percent over the past year. Shoji Uehara also made the biggest headway as his family reorganized their drug-maker, Taisho Pharmaceutical, into a holding company which is now worth $2.5 billion, propelling them to No. 11 on the list. Of the five newcomers, social gaming entrepreneurs such as Tomoko Namba (No. 47, net worth $545 million), the founder of DeNA who has run the company for 12 years, has been gaining on the competition with popular games such as Blood Brothers. Gaming has also propelled the fortunes of Kagemasa Kozuki, one of the list’s returnees, to No. 26 with wealth of $1.2 billion, making him Japan’s newest billionaire. Another newcomer is Yoshiko Mori (No.33; $1 billion), chairperson of the Mori Art Museum and a member of the Board of Directors of Mori Building and the wife of the late Minoru Mori. Minoru’s brother, Akira Mori, is ranked No. 6 on the list with $5 billion, as Japan’s recovering real estate sector has boosted his fortunes. He is the chief of Mori Trust which operates rental buildings and hotels, and has plans to use his growing wealth to acquire properties overseas. The minimum net worth to make it to this year’s list is $400 million. The full list of Japan’s richest can be found in the April issue of Forbes Asia, which is available on newsstands now. The top 10 richest in Japan are:

• Tadashi Yanai; US$15.5 billion

• Nobutada Saji; $10.7 billion

• Masayoshi Son; $9.1 billion

• Hiroshi Mikitani; $6.4 billion

• Kunio Busujima; $5.2 billion

• Akira Mori; $5 billion

• Takemitsu Takizaki; $4.7 billion

• Han Chang-Woo; $3.4 billion

• Keiichiro Takahara & family; $3.3 billion

• Masatoshi Ito; $2.8 billion

Unlike the billionaire rankings, Japan’s 50 richest list includes fortunes that are shared among family members. For instance, Forbes Asia combined the wealth of the Kanazawa brothers, Kinoshita brothers and Tada brothers. Forbes Asia also considers family fortunes like that of Suntory’s Saji family, which owns 90 percent of the drinks company. Nobutada Saji is the third generation to run the firm and owns less than 10 percent himself. Though this 10 percent was enough to allow him to join the billionaire ranks as an individual, for the Japan list Forbes Asia calculated the entire family’s stake, which is shared by 20 people. The list was compiled using shareholding and financial information obtained from the families and individuals, stock exchanges, analysts, Japan’s EDINET and other sources. Net worths are based on stock prices and exchange rates as of the close of markets on Mar. 25, 2013. Private companies were valued based on financial ratios and comparisons with similar publicly traded companies. — Forbes Asia