Yasutaka Mizutani appointed as President, APAC

Colt Technology Services, Co., Ltd., (Representative Director: Katsuya Oe, Headquartered in Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo), the digital infrastructure company, today announced, that as of January 1st this year, Yasutaka Mizutani, who had been acting as ‘CMO’ (Chief Marketing Officer) at its UK Headquarters since October 1st, 2019, was appointed as ‘President, APAC’.

Though Mr. Mizutani will stay at Colt’s UK Headquarters, he will be more closely involved in the company’s Asian business than in his previous role, supervising its overall business operations and development in Japan and Asia. (Mr. Katsuya Oe will continue in his role of Representative Director in Japan and VP, Sales Asia, and will report to Mr. Mizutani.)

Mr. Mizutani’s appointment is in line with the completed acquisition of Lumen Technologies’ EMEA businesses, which was announced on November 1st, last year. More than 1,000 Lumen employees have moved to Colt, and Ms. Annette Murphy, Colt’s Chief Commercial Officer and formerly President, EMEA and Asia Pacific at Lumen, whom Mr. Mizutani will report to, is also bringing her executive leadership experience to Colt.

Regarding Mr. Mizutani’s appointment as President, APAC, which includes Japan and Asia, Ms. Murphy said, “As CMO, Mizu (Nickname of Mizutani) has played a key role in driving Colt’s corporate growth and delivering on our global marketing strategy, getting closer to our customers with innovations such as AI. He has been selected as one of the ’50 Most Influential Marketers in the World’ by Data Economy magazine. We are now one of the largest business-only telecommunication service providers in the world with around 2. 3 billion euros in combined revenue. Asia and Japan are critical to our growth and Mizu’s deep understanding of the Japan and Asia markets, customers and culture means he is ideally positioned for success within this important role.”

Mr. Mizutani said, “I’m very pleased to return to the area as the President, APAC. I started my career in Japan as Technology Support Engineer, and joined KVH Co., Ltd., the predecessor of Colt, in October 2007, also as a Technology Support Engineer. I was stationed in Singapore as Regional/Product Marketing Manager from January 2015 to July 2016, before relocating to the UK.

“According to a survey conducted by Gartner in 2023*, global CAGR (between 2022 and 2027) in the corporate Fixed Data Network market is 2.4%, compared to 3.9% in Asia, and 5.4% in Japan only, with a higher growth rate expected in APAC region. I would like to achieve similar growth at Colt APAC, together with our employees across the region.”

CT Bureau