YMC Co., Ltd. Statement

YMC Co., Ltd.
CEO Ryuji Yamamura Corporate Profile

• Head Office : YMC Karasuma-Gojo Bldg., 284 Daigo-cho, Karasuma Nishiiru Gojo-dori, Shimogyo-ku, Kyoto 600-8106, Japan
• Established : January 28, 1980
• Capital : ¥620.75 million
• Business activities : Production and sales of packing materials and packed columns for High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), custom purification and custom synthesis.

Why we received capital from Nomura and how we thought we could benefit from a relationship with Nomura

I founded YMC in January 1980.In recent years, a steady flow of large orders from major American and European pharmaceuticals manufacturers has allowed our business to grow rapidly both in terms of scope and scale, enabling us to become one of the world's leading specialized manufacturers of packing materials for High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC).

While the company's rapid growth allowed us to aim for an IPO, this same rapid growth also made it difficult to prepare logistically for such a step and considerable resources and energy would have been necessary to solve these issues.Meanwhile, the funding and share transfers that we executed during each prior growth stage had made it necessary to rebuild our shareholder profile.

Given our situation, we made the decision to receive capital from Nomura and NPF based on the following line of reasoning:

• NPF's experience and success in raising the value of investee companies, its management resources, and overall enthusiastic approach towards our business made us confident that we would be able to accelerate our company reforms.
• Nomura's dominant position and track record with IPOs would allow us to carry out an IPO in the shortest possible time period.
• We would be able to put in place an advanced management strategy, including M&A activity, taking advantage of Nomura Group's overall group strength and strong client base.
• The timing of NPF's capital participation would enable us to restructure and start the process for optimizing our shareholder profile.

Since receiving capital from NPF at the end of March 2005, Nomura and NPF have helped us with solutions to our issues and we are looking forward to a continued strong relationship.

What our primary concerns were

At first, we worry worried about the risk that NPF, as a financial investor, might sell our shares at some future point in a manner that wouldn't be favorable to other shareholders or company employees.However, discussions with NPF made us confident that NPF's vision reflected our goals and we soon developed a strong relationship that eliminated our initial worries.

We were then concerned that whether business partners and banks might not understand the deal.To the contrary, the response was overwhelmingly positive, with the move to partner with an excellent company like Nomura seen as a sign of further growth going forward.