Kenjiro (Ken) Watanabe

Ken is Co-Managing Partner at E12 and President & CEO at Mitsui Global Investment. He brings two decades of hands-on operating and investing experience, spanning venture and growth investing, buyouts and cross-border M&A across Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Before joining E12, Ken was a General Manager at Mitsui & Co., Ltd., where he oversaw the private equity and capital solutions practices, managing investments in buyout funds and a leasing firm that Mitsui operates solely or jointly with strategic partners across Asia and Europe.

His career with Mitsui started in 2003 in supply chain management for pharmaceutical ingredients, serving pharma companies globally. From 2007 through 2013 he was based in Beijing, extensively involved in venture and growth investments and portfolio management in China. He was later part of the founding team of a Southeast Asia and Greater China private equity fund established jointly by Advantage Partners and Mitsui, serving as Managing Director and a member of the Investment Recommendation Committee from 2016 through 2021. Most recently he supported and executed multiple cross-border M&A and investment transactions for Mitsui's nutrition and wellness business.

Ken holds an M.S. in Science & Engineering from Waseda University and an EMBA from Peking University. He is fluent in Chinese.

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