Put Your Buyer Profile in Front of Japan's Sell-Side Advisers

Japan's small-business succession market runs in Japanese. Owners sell through a regional bank's succession desk, a tax accountant, a local M&A boutique or a public support center, often to buyers those advisers already know, and the best businesses rarely reach a public listing (see our platform landscape guide). If you are a foreign buyer, the hard part is often not finding the money or the nerve. It is becoming someone an adviser thinks to call. That is why we built the Keisho X buyer register. It is free and takes a minute or two.

Join the buyer register

The problem it solves. An adviser working for a Japanese owner has a duty to that owner and limited time. A buyer from abroad is an unknown. Will they really close? Can they work in Japanese? Do they understand what the owner cares about, which is usually the staff and the business carrying on, not only the price? (See how Japanese owners decide.) Advisers rarely have time to find out from a cold email. As our regional banks briefing puts it, banks don't open the borrower book to strangers. The register's job is to make you a little less of a stranger: a short, reviewed profile that tells an adviser, in their terms, whether you fit the business on their desk.

Why now. Family succession is no longer the default. In Teikoku Databank's 2025 successor survey, about one in five new company presidents in 2025 arrived through what TDB calls "M&A and other" (acquisitions, secondments and spin-offs), on preliminary figures. Internal promotions now edge out handovers to relatives. TDB credits seven straight years of decline in companies without a successor to wider access to succession support, from public and private advice desks to M&A intermediaries and, in particular, regional financial institutions. Those are the advisers this register is for.

The cost of waiting is also rising. On 8 October, Teikoku Databank reported 296 bankruptcies in April–September 2026 in which the lack of a successor was a factor, the most for any fiscal first half since its series began in FY2013. In Tokyo Shoko Research's separate count, most such cases were micro companies whose owner had died or fallen ill (our briefing on the numbers explains what they do and don't say). The lesson for buyers is that the sale happens upstream, while the owner is still well. The advisers who see those owners first are the people this register puts you in front of.

What you tell us. The form has three short steps.

1. About you. Your name and email. We confirm the address before anything else happens.
2. What you're looking for. Four quick choices: which kind of buyer you are (individual or searcher, strategic or corporate acquirer, PE or investment fund, family office, or other); the deal size you'd consider, in yen with a rough dollar guide, from under ¥50 million to over ¥5 billion, or "not sure yet"; the sectors you'd look at, or "open to any sector"; and where in Japan, from Hokkaido to Kyushu and Okinawa, or "anywhere". If you like, add your country of residence, when you'd like to buy, your level of Japanese ("none" is a valid answer) and a short note for advisers.
3. Sharing. One separate checkbox: share my profile with vetted Japanese M&A advisers. Leave it unticked and you are simply a newsletter subscriber.

That is all. No pitch deck, no proof of funds, no call to book. If you only want the newsletter, the first step has a "Just subscribe" button.

What happens next. We email you a link to confirm your address. The same email holds your private profile link; keep it. If you ticked the sharing box, we review your profile before any adviser sees it. Only after it is approved, and your email is confirmed, do we share it, and only with Japanese M&A advisers and intermediaries we have vetted. They see what you entered (name, email, buyer type, deal size, sectors, regions and any optional details), plus when you gave consent and when we approved your profile. They never see our internal notes. Once you confirm your email, you also receive the Japan Succession Brief, our briefings on the policy, data and deal-making behind Japanese succession.

Create your buyer profile

What you keep control of.

• Nothing is shared by default. Sharing needs its own tick, and you can withdraw it at any time.
• A private link to change anything. Edit your answers, stop sharing while keeping your profile and the newsletter, or delete your profile for good.
• A record of who received it. We log which advisers received your profile and when. Under Japan's privacy law (APPI) you can ask us to disclose those records.
• The newsletter is separate. Unsubscribing stops only the newsletter. Your sharing choice stays as you set it until you change it.
• No one can overwrite you. Once your email is confirmed, re-submitting the form with your address does not change your profile. We email you your private link instead.

The full details are in our privacy policy.

What it is not. The register opened this month. We won't dress it up: we make no promise about how many advisers will see your profile or how many businesses you will hear about. It does not replace the groundwork that wins Japanese deals: presence, Japanese-language capability and a credible continuity plan, all covered in our complete foreign buyer's guide. What it does is put a clear, reviewed description of you in front of the people who decide which buyers to call, at no cost and with little effort.

Two minutes, then back to work. If you are serious about buying a business in Japan, the cheapest step you can take this week is to be findable by the advisers who sell them. Tell us what you'd buy, decide whether to share it, and change your mind whenever you like.

Join the Keisho X buyer register