At Cadira Capital Management, our mission is "Connecting the Investment Chain and Beyond". Collaborative relationships with internal and external stakeholders are essential to achieving our mission. We therefore seek to deepen the relationship of trust with our stakeholders by disclosing specific details of our activities, including dialogue with the companies in which we invest.
This month, we'll report on the following activities.
Our Dialogue with Bengo4.com, Inc.
Bengo4.com, Inc. is a legal IT services company. The company was founded in 2005 as a marketing support company for lawyers. The founder, Mr. Taichiro Motoe, is a lawyer himself and started the company with the goal of eliminating inefficiencies in the industry. Because it is prohibited in Japan to earn commissions from lawyer referrals, the company struggled to generate revenue and was in the red for the first eight years of its existence. He then established a marketing support business model that allowed lawyers to boost their profile slots for a fee, which improved the bottom line and led to the company's IPO in 2014.
After becoming a leader in lawyer marketing support, the company next focused on the need to eliminate inefficiencies in the contracting process and launched CloudSign, an e-contracting service, in 2015. The service has grown to meet the needs of businesses to improve efficiency, and its growth has accelerated in response to the rapid increase in demand for electronic contracts due to the 2020 Corona Pandemic.
The company is currently developing a new service called "Legal Brain", which is a service to improve business efficiency in the legal field by using LLM (Large Scale Language Modeling). More specifically, the company is developing an interactive AI tool like ChatGPT specifically for the legal field. Since law requires finding relevant information from a huge amount of text, such as articles and precedents, there is room for dramatic productivity improvement by using LLM. Legal Brain is being developed for a service launch in the summer of 2024 and is expected to continue to grow, targeting not only lawyers but also corporate legal departments.
Let's summarize the social issues that Bengo4.com, Inc. addresses. In Japan, there is a term called "Niwari-Shihou", which literally means "20% justice". This means that only 20% of the people who need it have access to legal services. The reasons for this are thought to be the high cost and the fact that people do not know how to find a lawyer. The situation of low-income people, who are particularly vulnerable to cost issues, crying themselves to sleep because they cannot afford to consult a lawyer is an element that contributes to the disparity.
In addition, in business development and acquisitions, legal interpretation can make an important difference in business decisions. The ability of a legal department to go beyond mere compliance and devote sufficient resources to strategic areas directly affects a company's competitiveness. Japanese companies often suffer significant losses from failed overseas acquisitions, and strengthening the legal department can help avoid such situations and increase international competitiveness.
The measures promoted by Bengo4.com, Inc., such as improving access to lawyers and increasing productivity in the legal field, are aimed at solving the social problems mentioned above.
Finally, we present the content of the dialogue. During a meeting with the management of Bengo4.com, Inc., Cadira Capital Management exchanged views on the social issues mentioned above and the company's efforts to address them, based on a structured chart. We also shared our view that the company could build relationships with more stakeholders by improving the disclosure of these activities and suggested the preparation of an integrated report as a means to achieve this goal.
As the company has only been in business for a short time, its governance structure is still in the process of improvement. For example, gender diversity is lagging and the board is all male. However, the company has started to take steps to rectify this situation, including nominating its first female director as a candidate for the AGM in June 2024, and further improvements are expected in the future.
Our Dialogue with Sunwels Co., Ltd.
Sunwels is a company engaged in the nursing care business, focusing on facilities specializing in Parkinson's disease.
It was established in 2006 in Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture, as a day care service provider with the aim of supporting people with illnesses and disabilities, based on the experience of its president, Mr. Naoshiro, who suffered from a serious illness. The company opened "PD House", a private-pay nursing home specializing in Parkinson's disease and since then the company has continued to build new facilities. Currently it has 31 facilities in operation, making it the mainstay of its business.
Parkinson's disease is a progressive degenerative disease caused primarily by the degeneration of dopamine neurons in the brain and is classified by the Japanese government as an incurable disease. The symptoms of Parkinson's disease vary widely and there is no cure for the disease, although it is possible to slow the progression of the disease with appropriate rehabilitation and medication. However, there are few specialized nursing homes, despite the fact that the disease requires specialized knowledge in treatment and care because the symptoms and progression vary from patient to patient, and even the same patient's symptoms change during the course of a day.
The company has a specialized rehabilitation program for Parkinson's disease under the supervision of a specialist physician and has established a system that allows for visiting treatment by a neurologist and 24-hour nursing and medication management. With many patients not receiving adequate care, the need for the company's services is extremely high, and in its mid-term plan announced in May, the company announced that it would accelerate the pace of openings and begin offering home care for homebound patients.
In our ongoing dialogue, we have communicated to Sunwels that the development of services for Parkinson's patients, especially those with mild forms of the disease who are not receiving appropriate care, would have a significant social impact and could be a pillar of growth for the company. We are very positive about the launch of the home care service in this regard. The nursing business has faced a bottleneck in terms of securing human resources, but the company does not seem to be short of human capital at present, as it has improved its working environment by enhancing training, introducing an internal qualification system, offering better compensation and making use of technology. In fact, we toured a PD home and spoke with the facility manager, who told us that the company has been able to secure human resources despite the extremely high demand of caregivers in the area where the facility is located.
Study Session with the Financial Services Agency
At the end of May, Cadira Capital Management invited the Financial Services Agency of Japan to hold a study session on the revision of the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act ("FIEA). The session was primarily aimed at emerging asset management companies and focused on the key issue of regulatory reforms related to asset management companies. Approximately 40 participants attended the session. A presentation by the FSA was followed by a Q6A session and a lively discussion among the participants.
In the name of "Asset Management Nation", the Japanese government is promoting measures to revitalize the asset management industry. One of the problems identified is the small number of asset management firms in Japan, which is far fewer than in the United States (14,806), Hong Kong (1,979) and the United Kingdom (1,100) (source: https://www.fsa.go.jp/en/refer/diet/213/01.pdf). Therefore, the government has begun to emphasize the development of emerging asset management companies. Emerging asset management companies are well suited to take on new initiatives, but they require considerable effort to establish themselves. Therefore, support is needed to motivate them to enter the market.
The recent revision of the FIEA includes lowering the net assets standard and expanding the scope of outsourcing utilization, which will make it easier than before to establish an asset management company by reducing the initial investment and fixed costs. In addition, although it is difficult for emerging asset management companies to acquire clients due to their lack of experience, the Asset Owner Principle to be announced this summer will consider a system that does not exclude emerging asset management companies simply because they have a short business history.
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