Jan. 05, 2026Marubeni Corporation
The New Year greeting delivered by Masayuki Omoto, President & CEO at the Marubeni Tokyo Head Office on January 5 is posted below.
To all my Marubeni Group colleagues: Happy New Year! As we usher in 2026, I would like to extend my warmest New Year’s greetings and my heartfelt hope that the coming year will be filled with renewed optimism and smiles for all members of the Marubeni Group around the world, as well as for your families. First and foremost, I wish to express my profound gratitude to the many colleagues across the Marubeni Group who have continued to support our operations on the front lines in various countries and regions around the world throughout the year-end and New Year holidays. Your dedication, professionalism, and unwavering commitment form the very foundation of our organization, and I extend to you my sincere and heartfelt appreciation.
In the Japanese Zodiac calendar, 2026 is the Year of the Horse. Since ancient times, the Horse has symbolized the driving force of charging forward and the unity of moving as a group—a powerful animal that runs across the land on strong legs and cuts through the wind to keep moving forward, and that can generate incredible collective force as part of a herd. We, too, will embrace the winds of change and transform their energy into a tailwind propelling us forward to new heights: 2026 will be the year the Marubeni Group truly leaps forward to our next stage. The protagonists of this journey are, without question, each and every one of you.
Turning Global Change into a Tailwind—The Source of Marubeni’s Enduring StrengthsLooking back on 2025, it was a year marked by ever-stronger winds of change. While the adoption of new technologies like generative AI expanded dramatically, the external environment underwent significant and turbulent shifts. These included supply chain restructuring driven by U.S. tariffs and geopolitical factors, increasing localization of the global economy, the rollout of domestic demand expansion policies by various governments, widening supply-demand gaps for critical minerals, and delays in implementing measures addressing climate change and decarbonization. Amid these unstable conditions and sharp fluctuations in currency values, we witnessed a renewed focus on pursuing universal values that transcend the uncertainties of any given era. This shift helped drive gold prices to historic highs—a development emblematic of the profound changes we experienced over the past year.
Since the start of our Mid-Term Management Strategy GC2027, I have visited over 100 frontline sites (gemba) of Marubeni Group companies around the world, where I engaged in dialogues with the Group colleagues taking on challenges there. Through these dialogues, I repeatedly witnessed Marubeni’s strength firsthand, and I kept asking myself, “What is the source of Marubeni’s strengths, those that endure from the past through the present and into the future?” I firmly believe it is exactly because we live in an era of accelerating global change that the Marubeni Group can leverage “Marubeni’s enduring strengths” to face change head-on, reliably turn those changing winds into a tailwind, and pursue universal value growth.
Here, I would like to share with you my thoughts on “Marubeni’s enduring strengths.”
First and foremost, the primary source of Marubeni’s enduring strength is our company creed: “Fairness, Innovation, and Harmony” (Sei, Shin, Wa). The calligraphy of the creed from 1949 shows the three corresponding Japanese characters written horizontally and read, as was typical during that era, from right to left. Reading it horizontally from left to right, as we would in modern Japanese today, the order of the creed becomes “Harmony, Innovation, and Fairness” (Wa, Shin, Sei), with the tenet of harmony coming first. This “wa” can also be used as a verb, becoming “wa suru” (“to harmonize”). Indeed, in this era of rapid global change, the ability to harmonize diverse elements brought about by change is precisely the source of Marubeni’s enduring strength. In a world where fragmentation is deepening and centers of gravity are undergoing a shift, we must directly confront contradictions and differences, employ harmony to reconcile these, and in so doing bring about innovation within ourselves—and implement all aspects of doing so with fairness. As we move forward in harmony with the world’s great changes, we pursue innovation to transform these changes into something new, implementing our initiatives with fairness—and thereby sublimating these efforts into our growth. I believe that this very approach is the source of enduring strength that makes Marubeni truly Marubeni.
The second source of Marubeni’s enduring strengths lies in our very name. “Marubeni” contains no character that confines us to the traditional notion of a sogo shosha. The “maru”—meaning “circle”—in Marubeni symbolizes both “the world” and “all the directions of the compass,” embodying our capacity to see the global landscape from every angle and to explore, without compromise, the best possible solutions for that world. At first glance, the rise in geopolitical risk may appear purely as a threat. Yet, in parallel, we are witnessing the steady emergence of new opportunities born out of this very change: the growth of domestically driven economies, particularly in the United States, Japan, and the Global South; the evolution and enhanced importance of safety and security as concepts and as value drivers; and the increasing value of critical resources amid shifting supply–demand dynamics. The rise of new technologies, exemplified by generative AI, is also an important driver of change. At the same time, we are fortunate to have the opportunity both to learn from and adopt leading global use cases to enhance our own productivity and competitiveness, and to capture new business opportunities arising from supply–demand shifts driven by the explosive expansion of the generative-AI economic sphere.Marubeni is defined by its ability to maintain a panoramic view of global change and opportunity, to swiftly recognize the world’s most advanced and effective models, and to discern with clarity where we must head next. This is one of the enduring strengths embedded in our name.
The third source of Marubeni’s enduring strengths lies in our organizational wisdom—what we refer to as winning strategies. The Marubeni Group of today exists because, at this very moment out in the field, we are implementing these universal winning strategies—honed through past successes and failures—elevated as our organizational wisdom. It is precisely in times of rapid global change that we must leverage our organizational wisdom and steadfastly implement these universal winning strategies crafted over time—this is the strength of the Marubeni Group in creating enduring value, and it is every single one of us, as Marubeni Group colleagues around the world, who embody these winning strategies in our work every single day.
Implementing GC2027 to Climb to the Next Summit—Becoming a value-creating corporate group that transcends the boundaries of a sogo shoshaObserving and synthesizing the global environment and the changing times, we discern our universal winning strategies—how we have prevailed in every era, across every field, and in every way—and anticipate, embrace, and harmonize with changes, always boldly pursuing the utmost excellence in the world. Taking on this perennial challenge is the essence of the Marubeni spirit, and in 2026, we will shift into a higher gear to make even further progress in pursuit of our goals. Our compass for this journey is the Global crossvalue platform—our vision of the Marubeni Group of the future: becoming a value-creating corporate group that transcends the boundaries of a sogo shosha (diversified trading conglomerate), and the strategy that sets a clear path toward achieving the great heights of this next level is GC2027.
The Marubeni Group has made steady progress in 2025 in our climb toward the next summit defined in GC2027—a market capitalization of more than 10 trillion yen. To compare our goal to scaling a mountain, back when GC2027 was first announced in February 2025, we were around 40% of the way to the summit with a market cap of about 4 trillion yen, but now, we stand at seventh station, roughly 70% of the way up the mountain. Our S&P credit rating was also upgraded to A- in November 2025; the foundation for our next phase of growth is now solidly in place, and we are fully energized to keep up our efforts to reach new heights. The journey thus far has been far from smooth, but through the efforts of each and every one of you, we are continuing to make real progress on our climb.
Now that we stand at roughly the seventh station of the mountain, we have advanced to a point from which the next summit—the “tenth station”—is within view. Now that our energy is fully charged and our footing is solid, I believe that, even amid fierce winds of change, we should boldly yet prudently advance along the road ahead and strive, with courage, for all of us to reach this next summit as quickly as possible.
We will continue to advance along the path ahead toward our vision of “transcending the traditional framework of a sogo shosha” by executing the GC2027 strategy with discipline. Just as one would carefully polish a treasured personal possession, we will wholeheartedly refine our existing core businesses. We will boldly implement capital allocation aimed at sustainable growth, and we will concentrate our management resources on universal “winning formulas,” propagating them throughout the Group. Boldly and consistently building up each of these initiatives with discipline is precisely the very essence of GC2027.
In putting GC2027 into disciplined practice, I believe what matters most is our ability to “wa suru”—to harmonize.
First, in true Marubeni fashion, we will explore and pursue the world’s best practices in value creation, and by harmonizing the gap between Marubeni and the world’s leading companies, we will implement transformative initiatives to go beyond the traditional framework of a sogo shosha and move toward our next summit.
At the same time, we will harmonize two seemingly opposing qualities—boldness and prudence—so that we can “bring them into harmony and create new value in the right way.” In doing so, we will fully unleash Marubeni’s enduring strength: the ability to generate enduring, universal value. We will continue to cherish the basic “defensive” disciplines and routines that have long underpinned our resilience. At the same time, wherever greater speed is required, we will not hesitate to shift up a gear and boldly take decisive measures on the “offense” to forge the future. As we aim for the next summit, this is precisely the moment for the Marubeni Group to demonstrate its enduring strength—to powerfully charge up the steep path ahead like a galloping horse, living up to the spirit of this coming year, the Year of the Horse.
The driving force behind this climb is none other than each of your powerful strides forward—the collective effort of all of us in the Marubeni Group to keep advancing toward new heights, sometimes spurring ourselves on to pick up the pace. This collective effort is the momentum that will propel the Marubeni Group to the next level. Through my dialogues with many of you at our frontline sites (gemba) last year, I witnessed firsthand the remarkable growth mindsets and capabilities of the Marubeni Group. I am convinced that for the Marubeni Group, this next level is merely a steppingstone, and that we possess the enduring strength to achieve the highest level on the global stage.
The Essence of Marubeni: Growing as People Finally, to mutually reaffirm Marubeni’s unwavering foundation and roots, I would like to share the words of Mr. Tetsujiro Furukawa, who laid the groundwork for the present-day Marubeni as Senior Managing Director of Marubeni Shoten (our direct predecessor) in the 1920s and 1930s. He left us a piece of wisdom that can inspire the generation working on the front lines of any era: “Do your mission as a human being.... There is no other way but to perfect one’s character through one’s profession and thereby fulfill one’s mission to the nation and society. Before becoming a businessperson, first become a person.” Through accomplishing work that benefits society, we ourselves grow into better human beings. This constant commitment to becoming better people is precisely the fundamental attitude that the Marubeni Group has put into practice from the past and continues to into the future. I believe that setting our respective missions and pursuing them wholeheartedly as we work to reach the Marubeni Group’s next level will also help enable us to simultaneously pursue each of our own “next levels” as individual people—taking a step toward becoming an even better version of ourselves than how we see ourselves today.
Together, let’s make 2026 a year of excellence. Harnessing the upward momentum of the Year of the Horse, we will make this a great year of further progress—as individual people, as professionals, and as members of the Marubeni Group.
I hereby pledge to hold myself to the highest standards of discipline, spur myself onward, and continue racing at full speed alongside all of you toward the next summit for the sake of the Marubeni Group.
Finally, I sincerely hope 2026 will be filled with hope, growth, and smiles for each and every one of you and your families around the world, and I look forward to continuing to work with you this year.
