NAGOYA, Japan — Mayor Richard Riordan and his traveling delegation left Japan on Friday for the rest of Asia, taking with them a clearer vision of the critical but complex role that overseas deals will play in Los Angeles' economic growth.
Over the past week, Japanese businessmen have approached mayoral aides to broach the idea of building a major Los Angeles hotel. U.S. Embassy officials and American executives in Japan have advised the delegates on strategies for penetrating the notoriously intricate Japanese economy. Executives with Los Angeles telecommunications companies probed the nuances of Japanese deregulation, discovering--among other things--that Americans and Japanese have vastly different notions of what that means. But they also found that there may be room for Los Angeles companies to profit by increased telecommunications business in Japan.
None of the executives participating in the mission have completed a deal. But Riordan aides and other delegates say that none were expected--at least not during the first leg of the two-week trip.
"One has to be patient," said Deputy Mayor Rockard Delgadillo, who handles economic development issues for Riordan. "But we're the powerhouse on our coast of the Pacific Rim, and they're the powerhouse on their side of the rim."
Executives for small telecommunications firms--who, like the other business members of the delegation, are paying their own way--were particularly pleased that they had been able to use Riordan to open doors that otherwise would have been closed to them.
Jeff Lawrence, chief executive of the Los Angeles-based software company Trillium, called the visit "an excellent opportunity to build new relationships and strengthen existing relationships with Japanese telecommunications companies."
In fact, Lawrence's presentation to Japanese executives in Tokyo was among the trip's most successful, several delegation members agreed. At its conclusion, one Japanese businessman expressed interest in Trillium's software and bluntly asked how much it cost, a departure from customary Japanese decorum.
Still, every stop has carried its reminders of the painful economic crisis in Asia, where nations are reeling and companies wary of their futures. On one hand, the crisis has made deals more difficult to solidify because potential trading partners are reluctant to make commitments amid such uncertainty. At the same time, it made Japanese business leaders more interested in Riordan, whose background as a venture capitalist caught their attention even more than his position as mayor of America's second-largest city.
