AMRO's NEW YORK BRANCH OPENED – BUT JAPAN STILL A FACTOR

Although our office was opened for business late last year, in the middle of winter, we postponed the official opening until a later date, when the weather was more agreeable, and AMRO's president would be able to attend. It finally took place in June, and was a wonderful event, with the president cutting the tape to ceremoniously open the entrance door from the street, while a large number of balloons — one for each member of our staff — were released to the brilliantly sunny sky.

But even the adrenalin of that exciting occasion and the many tasks in hand failed to drive Japan’ from my consciousness for long. The preoccupation of many American businessmen with the Japanese challenge wouldn't permit that in any case.

To promote my bank's arrival in the States and attract American corporate business, I participated as co-sponsor in a senes of seminars for chief financial officers of major US corporations in six major cities around the country. As it happened, I was the first scheduled speaker (at 9am on Monday mornings!) at each of these seminars, and the topic I chose was: ‘How can American business be more competitive at home and abroad?’ For dramatic effect I started my talk, perhaps somewhat unkindly, with this rather inane Japanese sentence: Yankiizu no Nihonjin no senshu ga haittekonai kagiri wa, mada Nihon kora no kyōsō wa hageshikunai to omowaremasu, which translates roughly as ‘As long as there are no Japanese ballplayers with the Yankees, I don't think the competition from Japan can be really called tough.’

I didn't provide a translation, continuing instead with the following in English: ‘That was the good news. The bad news is that from next year these seminars will be conducted entirely in Japanese!’

Sour smiles greeted these frivolous but provocative words as I launched into a more serious treatment of my chosen topic.

What was most surprising was that not one of the 80 to 120 ‘Chief Financial Officers’ participating in these seminars at each location — some 600 in all — asked me the meaning of my Japanese opening sentence. This lack of curiosity seemed to me symptomatic of the selfsatisfied, insular attitudes prevailing in American corporate circles.