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Japan's J-Star names three new partners

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Japanese lower middle-market private equity firm J-Star has elevated three longstanding staff to partner, bringing the total number of partners to nine.

Kazumasa Ohara, Kenta Shima, and Yutaka Tozaki all joined the firm in 2015. J-Star said a statement the move was aimed specifically at building out its investment, value creation, investor relations, and operations capacity.

Ohara is mainly involved in portfolio support; as a principal, he was deployed as CEO of school operator Alpha Corporation following a 100% acquisition in 2017. He is currently responsible for six portfolio companies, including Alpha and Pepper Lunch, a restaurant chain acquired in mid-2020.

Shima has led investor communications for the firm’s last three funds. He has also made five investments, including Alpha, and executed one exit. Previously a relationship manager at MUFG Bank, his experience also includes corporate finance.

Tozaki is an investor formerly of Nomura Securities and the Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry. He has made seven investments with J-Star spanning consumer and healthcare-related fields. The most recent is Toy Factory, a campervan designer and manufacturer.

J-Star was founded in 2006 by CEO Gregory Hara, managing partners Kenichi Harada and Hideaki Sakurai, and partner Tatsuya Yumoto as a spinout of the small-cap buyout program at Japanese VC firm Jafco. It closed its fifth fund at the hard cap of JPY 75bn (USD 563.5m) in April last year.

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