Michael Lacktorin

Mike Lacktorin is founding dean of the International College of Liberal Arts, a small, rigorous 4-year college established in April 2015 within the campus of Yamanashi Gakuin University in Kofu, Yamanashi.

 Mike is a 5th-generation Swede-Norwegian American. He was born and raised in Minneapolis-St Paul, Minnesota. He first came to Japan in December 1977 as a short-term student at Sophia University in Tokyo. One year later, he transferred to Sophia from pre-medicine studies at the University of Minnesota. Upon graduating from Sophia University in December 1980 with a BA in Comparative Culture, he joined the International Finance department of Nomura Securities Co., Ltd. in Tokyo as a financial analyst and the first non-Japanese hired by Nomura as a ‘regular employee’ (seishain).

 Two years later he returned to the US to do an MBA in finance at the University of Chicago and later re-joined Nomura on Wall Street as co-founder of its M&A business in the US. He returned to Japan at the end of the 1980s to found a small management consulting unit with Nomura Research Institute focusing on foreign firms in Japan and then became vice president and head of the Merchant Banking and M&A activities of Citibank Japan. After Citibank, he established Greater China Investments (GCI), a small consulitng firm that helped Japan’s small and medium-size companies, in the face of a rapidly appreciating Japanese yen, relocate their production facilities to Dalian and Shanghai, China.

 Mike is the first American to graduate from Keio University with a PhD in Economics. His PhD thesis was title ‘A Theoretical and Cross-Sectional Analysis of Foreign Direct Presence in Japan.’ He is co-author of two books on the Japanese economy and financial system and has taught as a full-time university professor for more than 20 years in Japan, Australia, and America. In 2004, he was dean and one of the founders of Akita International University (AIU), which now ranks above University of Tokyo as the top university in Japan in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

 Mike served honourably as a non-commissioned officer in a combat unit in Vietnam in 1970-71. Mike dedicates his life to the promotion of world peace and cross-cultural understanding through international higher education.

Profile

2002

Keio University,Ph.D. (Economics)

1983

University of Chicago, MBA (Finance)

1980

Sophia University, BA (Comparative Culture)

2008

Akita International University, International Affairs and Head, Japan Studies Program, Dean

2004

Akita International University, Global Business Program, Director and Professor

2002

Kansai Gaidai University, Asian Studies Program, Professor

2001

University of Puget Sound, Business Policy Program, Assistant Professor

2000

University of Western Australia, Department of Economics and Commerce, Lecturer

1998

Nagoya University of Foreign Studies, International Business Department, Professor

1993

Greater China Investments, Founder and CEO

1990

Citibank Japan, Merchant Banking and M&A, Vice President and Head

1988

Nomura Research Institute, Researcher

1986

Nomura Securities International, M&A, Assistant Vice President

1983

Ford Motor Company, World Headquarters, Financial Analyst

1980

Nomura Securities Co., Ltd., International Finance Department, Analyst

1968

U.S. Army, Germany, Vietnam, E5