ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Masahiro Okafuji, President & CEO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced today that it won the second prize in the Nikkei Annual Report Awards 2017 held by Nikkei Inc. Our Annual Report (integrated report) received high recognition following the WICI Japan Award for Excellence in Integrated Reporting announced in November.

The Nikkei Annual Report Awards have been presented each year since 1998 to award particularly outstanding annual reports issued by Japanese companies, thereby encouraging the further improvement and widespread use of annual reports. This year, around 100 companies entered, with one company selected to receive the first prize and five companies selected to receive the second prize. In selecting the prizewinners, fund managers, analysts and other experts examined the reports comprehensively and fairly according to a wide range of standards for examination.

The Annual report of ITOCHU was highly recognized with the remark “The report provides a concise and sufficient summary of information that investors require, and its level of completion is extremely high with the editorial policy being very clear; in particular, the message from the CEO aiming at a sustainable increase of corporate value is frank and powerful, referring to the process for governance and the future issues to be addressed.” We believe that the initiatives for ensuring the further deepening of the understanding of ITOCHU among shareholders, investors and other stakeholders received a good evaluation, leading to the prize.

In addition, the Annual report of ITOCHU was chosen as the “‘outstanding integrated report’ gaining a particularly good reputation from a lot of investment managers” that the Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) announced on January 19 upon a request for selection to sixteen investment managers to whom the investment of domestic shares is entrusted. The ability of senior management to convey the long-term vision, the process for creating added value for a sustainable increase of corporate value and easy-to-understand explanations of the business models and the non-financial capital, among others, were the aspects that were highly recognized. The disclosure of the formula for calculating the remuneration for officers, among other related data, was extremely highly recognized as the most advanced activity among the Japanese companies.

ITOCHU Corporation will continue its efforts to further improve the annual report and communicate useful financial and non-financial information and data to all investors and other stakeholders.

■ Reference: Annual Report of ITOCHU (for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017)
https://www.itochu.co.jp/en/ir/doc/annual_report/