Michael K Adachi

On October 19, 1987, also known as Black Monday, the market fell by 22.6%. As he sat in the Merrill Lynch trading rooms with a Japanese client in New York, he assessed that the company would not survive by selling US equity only, and as such decided to market LBO funds to Japanese institutional investors managed by Merrill Lynch asset management. He placed over US$1 billion.

In 1990, he moved to Invesco Asset Management to establish 1st Foreign Investment Trust Management. He received the licence from the Japanese Government. Then in 1993, Michael moved to Paribas Asset Management Japan as its President to manage over US$6 billion of AUM.

In 1998, Michael joined Prive Securities as Partner and Executive Managing Director to assist its President to build their proprietary trading business

On October 7, 1998, he experienced the Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) shock: the LTCM

and Foreign Exchange market Yen/$ dropped 20-yen in one day. After personally visiting LTCM to analyse the event, Michael made the decision to acquire this cheap asset in Asia.

In 2000, Michael decided to explore technology and founded Creative Future Content (CFC), a company that specialised in 3D animation, music, and sports rights management. He set up an Internet content company that developed a new type of Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

In 2004, he founded a financial consulting firm to incubate venture companies and listing companies.

He financed more than 20 companies with over US$200 million.

On 15 September 2008, The Lehman Brothers collapsed. Michael felt that while the capital market had turned a corner, the future remained uncertain. This event motivated him to look more into technology and started to pursue Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

In 2017, he joined the e−silk road to help market Japanese and Korean technologies to the silk road market: Asia, Singapore to Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. He conducted Intellectual Property (IP) Bank seminars in Riyadh with KACST to introduce Japanese and Korean IP.

In October 2014, Michael organised a Korea-Saudi Business Forum in Seoul attended by six Saudi ministers and five Korean ministers together with more than 200 Saudi and Korean private companies. As a result of this Business Forum, 100 businesses were matched, with 15 MOU and five agreements signed.

In October 2017, he was contracted by Toppan Printing to be their advisor for Asia and the Middle East. He moved to Singapore to set up Kura Technologies with Toppan Printing alongside Singaporean professionals to curate and bring innovative Japanese IPs to Singapore, to incubate these largely Japanese domestic IPs with Singapore technology SMEs and start-ups to productise them into viable international solutions, and to use Singapore as the launchpad to market these solutions internationally to the rest of Asia and the Middle East.