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 14th Intercollegiate Negotiation Competition was held at Sophia University in Tokyo, November 21st and 22nd, 2015.

This year’s competition featured students from 15 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, Kyoto University, Doshisha University, Ritsumeikan University, Osaka University, and Kyushu University. There were also a combined team including four Australian universities; The Australian National University, The University of Sydney, The University of Melbourne and The Monash University, The University of Hong Kong and The National University of Singapore. In total, 251 undergraduate and graduate students (175 students competing in Japanese and 76 students competing in English), from these 21 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. The competition is based on the negotiated business between both companies.

The Red company is a property developer for office buildings, housing construction, urban development, and building management. They use the latest technology and manage everything from the execution of the design to the supervision of the construction, with the motto, “Friendly designs for people, in harmony with the environment”. On the other side, the Blue company is a major financial institution which runs commercial and investment banking. They have many branches all over the world and have subsidiary companies, which specialize in a derivative contracts and Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A).

On the first day during Round A, the teams aimed to resolve various challenges through "Arbitration" and very passionately argued on the three cases. The points of the discussions were “the headquarters building case”, which was a conflict over the construction of the headquarters building of the Blue company, “the financing case “, which concerned financing for the Red company, and “the Investment case” which was a conflict over the mergers and acquisitions investments by the Red company. On the second day in Round B, during the "Negotiation" portion of the competition, they debated on an agreement for the development project of a special economic zone. The Red company performed as the developer and the Blue company performed as the financial institution as well as the government agent.

It was training for a negotiation in a real business format which looked and felt extremely accurate comparable to a real world negotiation in all cases.

The final results for 2015 are as follows:

The Best Teamwork Award:

Highest score for the English competition: