The Cabinet decided Friday to appoint a former Nomura Securities Co. executive and a high-profile academic to lead a proposed government-backed entity tasked with restructuring indebted firms and revitalizing industries.
Atsushi Saito, a former vice president at the nation's biggest brokerage, will assume the presidency of the industrial revival body when it begins operations around May, and Shinjiro Takagi, a professor of law at Dokkyo University who is also known as a leading corporate rehabilitation expert, will head a panel of experts that will judge whether debt-laden firms are salvageable.
The much-awaited appointments come after months of conflict and confusion within the government, which had been unable to find anyone daring enough to pass life-or-death rulings on private-sector businesses.