CSR Activity Report (CSR Guideline Activity Reports)

Corporate Governance

Continually revise management systems, strengthen internal controls as part of efforts to fulfill the company’s social responsibilities.

Basic Approach

From the outset, one of Toray Group's managerial principles has been that the purpose of a company is to contribute to society. The Group has developed the Toray Philosophy that incorporates this principle.
The Toray Philosophy is structured with the following components: the Corporate Philosophy, Corporate Missions, and Corporate Guiding Principles. The Corporate Missions specify the Group's commitment “To practice sincere and trustworthy management,” and the Corporate Guiding Principles stipulate the Group's commitment to “Acting with fairness, high ethical standards and a strong sense of responsibility while complying with laws, regulations and social norms to earn trust and meet social expectations.”
In establishing its corporate governance structure, the Group seeks to fulfill these philosophies as its basic policy.

Structure

Toray Industries, Inc. operates as a company with a Board of Corporate Auditors and Board of Directors. The Board of Directors, which includes outside directors, decides on the business execution and supervises the execution of duties by the directors. The Board of Corporate Auditors includes outside auditors and independently audits the execution of duties by the directors, separately from the Board of Directors and the executing organization. This framework is designed to secure the transparency and fairness of decisions made by the Board of Directors. In addition, there is a Governance Committee, which serves as a voluntary advisory body to the Board of Directors. The Governance Committee deliberates on all matters relating to corporate governance, enhancing the effectiveness of governance by the Board of Directors.
Toray Group operates in a broad spectrum of business fields at a global level. Business management and decision-making, as well as oversight, require assessment of a wide variety of risks from multiple perspectives based on expertise related to the day-to-day operations of the Group’s worksites. To that end, the composition of the Board of Directors is designed to ensure that members bring a diverse range of perspectives to management oversight and decision-making based on their expertise in the Group's businesses. Meanwhile, outside directors are elected to the Board to ensure transparency and fairness, to ensure oversight from an even broader perspective, and to obtain appropriate managerial advice from a medium- to long-term perspective.
The Board of Corporate Auditors is entirely independent of the Board of Directors. Based on professional expertise in finance, accounting, and law, as well as an understanding of the Group's businesses, the Board of Corporate Auditors exercises oversight over directors' execution of their duties. The Governance Committee consists of the chairman, the president, and all outside directors, and an outside director serves as a chairperson. In fiscal 2023, the Board of Directors held 14 meetings, the Board of Corporate Auditors held 11 meetings, and the Governance Committee held 13 meetings1.

  1. 1 For the attendance of each director, please refer to pages 9-20 of the Notice of the 143rd Ordinary General Meeting of Stockholders. All corporate auditors attended every board meeting. (See page 27 of the Corporate Governance Report.)
Toray Group's Corporate Governance Structures and Skill MatrixAs of July 2024
General Meeting of Stockholders
Independent
Auditor
Board of Corporate
Auditors
5 Corporate
Auditors (3 Outside)
Board of Directors
12 Members
(5 Outside)
Governance
Committee
7 Members
(5 Outside)
Auditing
Department
President
Executive Committee
● Security Trade Administration
 Committee
● Ethics and Compliance
 Committee
● Risk Management Committee,
 etc.
Divisions, departments,
subsidiaries
Departmental committees
and meetings
Decision-making &
Oversight Functions
Business Execution
Functions
Conference Organs
Company Committees
Election
Election
Election
Audit
Report
Cooperation
Audit
Audit
Internal Audit
東レグループのコーポレート・ガバナンス体制図
Name Business operations Corporate Strategic
Management experience Global business Technology / Manufacturing / R&D Sales and marketing Legal / Intellectual property / Risk management Accounting / Finance Human resource management / diversity
Member of the Board Akihiro Nikkaku
Mitsuo Ohya
Satoru Hagiwara
Kazuyuki Adachi
Kazuhiko Shuto
Tetsuya Tsunekawa
(DX)
Masahiko Okamoto
Kunio Ito
(ESG)
Ryoji Noyori
(Science and technology)
Susumu Kaminaga
(Business strategies)
Kazuo Futagawa
(Policy science)
Yuko Harayama
(Innovation)
Corporate Auditor Hideki Hirabayashi
Yoshiyuki Tanaka
Hiroyuki Kumasaka
Makiko Takabe
Kozo Ogino
  1. * The skills matrix above is not an exhaustive list of all the knowledge and experience held by the individuals, but presents up to three major skills among those that the Company expects of them to promote management strategies.
  2. * For a brief biography of each director and corporate auditor, please refer to pages 9-20 of the Notice of the 143rd Ordinary General Meeting of Stockholders and pages 24-28 of the Notice of the 142nd Ordinary General Meeting of Stockholders.

CSR Roadmap 2025 Targets

CSR Roadmap goals

  1. Further improve governance by ensuring that Board of Directors operates in a manner that contributes to the enhancement of corporate value over the medium to long term.

  2. Perform monitoring based on the Basic Policy for Internal Control Systems, in accordance with Japan’s Companies Act.

Main initiatives and Key Performance Indicators

KPI
⑴ Regularly hold Toray Group Business Strategy Discussion sessions at Board of Directors meetings
1-❶
⑵ Consider the appropriate form of Toray head office involvement in the execution of business at each group company from the viewpoint of balancing the effectiveness of group-wide governance with the dynamic decision-making of subsidiaries
-
⑶ Expand opportunities for directors and corporate auditors to get the training they need to acquire the knowledge required to fulfill their responsibilities (excluding execution) and to fulfill their roles appropriately, including use of external programs
-
⑷ Operate an effective internal control system
1-❷
Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Target Fiscal 2023 Result
Fiscal 2023 Fiscal 2024 Fiscal 2025
8 times 8 times 8 times 8 times
90% 90% 90% 96%
  1. Reporting scope: Toray Group

Related Materiality for CSR

  • Strengthening Corporate Governance
  1. * Click here for the Materiality View of CSR Roadmap 2025 (PDF:392.4KB).PDF

Looking to the Future

Toray Industries’ Board of Directors conducted a “Questionnaire Survey to Evaluate the Effectiveness of the Board of Directors in the Fiscal Year Ended March 31, 2024.” The survey had among 18 respondents, comprising all of the Board members and corporate auditors. Additional interviews were also conducted with eight outside directors and outside corporate auditors to hear their opinions in relation to their responses to the questionnaire. In order to ensure transparency and objectivity, the Company contracted a third-party organization to collect and tabulate the questionnaires and conduct the interviews.
Analysis and evaluation of the effectiveness of the Board of Directors based on the above process concluded that the Board of Directors had generally fulfilled its roles and responsibilities in fiscal 2023. These include promoting diversity by changing the composition of the Board of Directors, continuing dialogue among outside directors and executive officers, and the creation of an environment that supports appropriate risk-taking to respond to the changing business environment. With regard to the matter of “diversity on the Board of Directors,” discussions continue to be held on the issue of appointing human resources who will contribute to the realization of the Toray Philosophy, based on the premise of ensuring quality. In terms of “further activating Board of Directors discussions,” specific measures for improvement are being taken in fiscal 2024 and beyond, continuing from fiscal 2023, to further improve the effectiveness of the supervisory function of the Board of Directors.
With respect to the opinions, etc., received from the members of the Board and corporate auditors in the course of evaluating the effectiveness of the Board of Directors, the Governance Committee will hold in-depth discussions based on those opinions with a view to further improving the effectiveness of the Board of Directors, as necessary.

Click here for the main initiatives and KPIs for CSR Guideline No. 1 “Corporate Governance” during the CSR Roadmap 2025 period (fiscal 2023–2025).PDF

Fiscal 2023 CSR Activity Report

Click bellow on activity reports for fiscal 2023.