The Sumitomo Group Public Affairs Committee strives to support college students’ negotiation skills, assist in upgrading higher education, and contribute to global human resource development through the Intercollegiate Negotiation Competition.

The 13th Intercollegiate Negotiation Competition was held at Sophia University in Tokyo, November 29th and November 30th, 2014. This year’s competition featured students from 16 schools from all over Japan: Hokkaido University, Tohoku University, University of Tokyo, Hitotsubashi University, Waseda University, Keio University, Sophia University, Chuo University, Gakushuin University, Nihon University, Nagoya University, Kyoto University, Doshisha University, Ritsumeikan University, Osaka University, Kyushu University. There was also a combined team of three Australian universities which also attended after an interval of two years, as well as The University of Hong Kong which joined the competition for the first time. In total, 54 teams, 258 undergraduate and graduate students (178 Japanese students and 80 students competing in English), from these 20 universities, all enthusiastically performed and competed with each other throughout.

The competition is separated into two major parts, Round A which is the “arbitration” round, and a Round B which serves as the “negotiation” portion, with each part having both a Japanese and English version. Each team was divided into two sides, the Red company in the fictional country of Negoland and the Blue company in Arbitria, a neighboring country of Negoland with the competition based on the negotiated business between both companies. The Red company was originally a chocolate business. Now they produce and sell various chocolates such as a chocolate that improves weight loss and enlarged their field of business and holdings to sporting goods through mergers and acquisitions. On the other side, the Blue company started in the cake and dairy businesses, and went into the beverage industry in 2000. The Blue beverage subsidiary took over the drink side of the business for the Blue company and released the sports drink, "Blue Energy" and the fat burning drink, "Blue Slim", with both drinks being a hot seller.

On the first day in Round A, the teams aimed to resolve various challenges through "Arbitration" and very passionately argued their points and proposals. The points of the discussions were around "the chocolate case", which concerned the problems caused from the sales agreement of chocolates between the Red company and the Blue company, and "the M&A case", which concerned the challenges arising from mergers and acquisitions, when the Red company purchased the Blue Drink company from the Blue company. On the second day in Round B, during the "Negotiation" portion of the competition, they debated on an agreement for five problems that remained and came to a conclusion through the use of such business practices as a Letter of Intent and using due diligence for solving "the M&A case". It was training for a negotiation in a real business format which looked and felt extremely accurate comparable to a real world negotiation.

The final results for 2014 are as follows:

The Best Teamwork Award: