Nozomu Sahashi

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Nozomu Sahashi (猿橋望, Sahashi Nozomu^?, born 1951 September 12 -) (previously Saruhashi ^[1]) is the founder of the Nova Corporation, previously the major eikaiwa (private school for conversational English) provider in Japan. Sahashi was the company's long standing President and CEO until 2007. Following governmental restrictions and a financial crisis in 2007, Sahashi was removed as president by an emergency board meeting for failing to adequately explain his "opaque way of fundraising and negotiating with potential business alliance partners."^[2].

Sahashi founded Nova in 1981 with two foreign English teachers.^[3] He is the inventor of Nova's particular teaching method and has patented it, as well as a telephone interpretation (translation) system. According to the Daily Yomiuri, in 2006 he made 159 million yen even though his company lost 2.9 billion yen.

The Mainichi Shimbun reported that Sahashi and his family's stock in the company rapidly declined over a two week period in September 2007, from holdings of 70% to 20%. It is believed this was done without filing a legally required report.

A possible criminal complaint will be filed with legal authorities by receivers for Nova if it is proven Sahashi sold the stock without first filing the required report with authorities.

[edit] Name change

News articles occasionally differ in the spelling/pronunciation of his last name. The confusion apparently began in 2002 when Nozomu Saruhashi became upset after seeing his name printed in an article phonetically rendered in katakana as サル ("saru", サル^?), which Saruhashi saw as deliberately emphasizing the first character in his name (猿), which means "monkey" in Japanese. He then shocked the staff the next day by insisting his surname was henceforth Sahashi.^[1]