For Sanjeev Gupta, senior managing executive officer and head of the Individual Group at Shinsei Bank, his 25-year career in Japan started out with a resume he dropped off at an accounting firm in Tokyo while visiting Japan on a tourist visa.
After graduating from college and getting a C.P.A. license in the U.S. in 1984, a time when the U.S. economy was contracting, he stopped over in Japan briefly before going back to India.
"I didn't know anybody, so I went to the general reception at Chuo Coopers & Lybrand, and a couple of other big accounting firms," he recalled during a recent interview at Shinsei's head office, a glassy bit of modern architecture across the road from Hibiya Park in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward.