Marie - it is great to hear your feedback on this and I have to say I share the same view on the reality you mentioned below.

Personally I have experienced frustrations with the parent company in various situations. However, I do think we should keep in mind of the vast differences between Japanese culture and American culture and how that influences perception, processes and decision making. Majority of IX's overseas subs are in Asian countries and one of the Western countries Australia let them down a few years ago, as some of us know. I do think taking trips and face to face communications with your counterparts / parties you deal with definitely improve mutual understanding and could potentially lead to process chgs etc. but like Marie said, this is hard stuff, especially at the highest level. I view part of this as cost of existence of OUC, so maybe sky is not the limit for OUC, but as long as we try to get as high as we can, we will all benefit.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 28, 2017, at 11:08 AM, Marie Reynolds <Marie.Reynolds@bfim.com<mailto:Marie.Reynolds@bfim.com>> wrote:

Being relatively new to ORIX, I can honestly say that both myself and my senior management colleagues at BFIM  were impressed by the fact that ORIX undertook the values definition exercise. It is clear to us that this exercise came at crucial time for ORIX. BFIM was certainly pleased to see that we  share many of the same values, which is not always the case with mergers and/or acquisitions.  You should be encouraged by the progress that has been made to date and I think you are.

Having been in the same situation under one of our previous ownerships (late 1998-mid 2003) with  Lend Lease in which we had an Australian parent Co, and was a subsidiary of  their US subsidiary , I can certainly see similar frustrations and concerns that have been raised in other posts on this topic.  While I  am encouraged that there is commitment and energy around defining a vision,  this is hard stuff and undoubtedly will take time, concessions and an unprecedented level of cooperation across a large global company.   This is not something that results oriented people like ourselves like to hear, but is the reality.

--Marie