After graduating from the University of Oxford with a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, he spent five years in Hong Kong and Japan working for Cathay Pacific Airways.After completing an MBA at INSEAD in France, he joined the UK merchant bank SG Warburg (now UBS Investment Bank). He also spent three years as CEO of UBS’s institutional asset management division in Japan.
After he left the bank in 2001, He completed his Ph.D. dissertation on the impact of foreign ownership and control on Japanese organizations at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge in 2005. He was Senior Fellow at the Judge Business School until 2013 and Project Professor at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo between 2010 and 2013. He was Guest Professor at the Faculty of Commerce, Keio University from 2013. He has also served on the board of number of leading Japanese companies since 2008 (currently Denso Corporation, Dai-ichi Life Holdings and Kirin Holdings). In the UK, he is a member of the boards of JP Morgan Japanese Investment Trust plc and BlueOptima Limited.