Katsuhiko Namikawa had worked for Mitsui Bank (currently known as Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation) for 30 years on the field of international finances. He had also spent a total of 17 years in London during his employment.
With globalization progressing in the past decades, he was mainly responsible for the development and cooperation of Japanese banks and Japanese companies in Europe, Africa and the Middle East as one of the executive directors of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation Europe Ltd. His vast experiences with bank investor relations and the Keidanren Asia Pacific Committee has led him to visit more than 80 countries in the Americas and Asia.
After leaving the banking industry, he has made contributing to the education of the next generation his personal mission, and started focusing on the internationalization of universities. Since 2015, he has been the director and president of ISI Education Group and Tokyo Business Language College (TBL). He has also been appointed full-time advisor and honorary president of the same institutions in April 2023.
In order to develop DX/GX/inbound human resources further, he also joined the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry's "Digital Transformation/DX Promotion Committee for Small and Medium Enterprises".
Among the many countries he has been to, Hungary was one of the places he has visited the most times, before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Since the first stages of Hungary's market economy development to joining the European Union, he has experienced all the significant changes of the country first hand along with his Hungarian friends. Thus, he hopes to continue contributing to the relations of Hungary, Europe and Japan.