Alico Japan · company update

Not specifically about Toyohara, but of interest because of his ongoing CMs as a spokesperson for their Select policies.

continuing to follow news of AIG

Again, not specific to Toyohara, but of interest to me because of his ALICO CMs and how the company’s problems might impact his continuing to be a commercial spokesman for their hospitalization insurance plans.

Two articles, the one from AP including some interesting information:

The Financial Times, citing people who spoke on condition of anonymity, reported this week that the government will swap the 80 percent stake it currently holds in AIG for even bigger pieces of three units that would be split off from the company: AIG’s Asian operations, its international life insurance business and its U.S. personal lines business.

AIG’s traditional insurance subsidiaries are widely viewed as safe. If AIG needed to file for bankruptcy protection, “AIG’s insurance subsidiaries are separately capitalized and would continue to operate,” Hartwig said.

Full text of the articles behind the cut…

2008 cm ranking

Toyohara ranked higher last year than the year before with only the ALICO CMs and despite the near downfall of AIG. He was tied with Maki Ota, who was in the same CM, so their numbers were identical. The region names are linked to the original Video Research Ltd charts published on 19 February 2009. Statistics kept are from January to December 2008.

Kanto region – 7th (12th last year) | broadcast 3418 times for 39 hours 54 minutes 30 seconds air time

Kansai region – 1st (13th last year) | broadcast 5124 times for 63 hours 56 minutes air time

Nagoya region – 6th (16th last year) | broadcast 3321 times for 39 hours 46 minutes

News articles (text and link) behind the cut…

ALICO Japan being sold

Not specifically about Toyohara, but has an impact on his being a spokesperson for ALICO Japan the past three years. Will he be doing AFLAC CMs in the future or is his face too associated with ALICO now? Perhaps a familiar face would be what whoever buys ALICO would want to assure a smooth transfer?  (I’m assuming that while the article talks about “life insurance,” the sale of ALICO includes the hospitalization insurance coverage that Toyohara does CMs for.)

Text behind the cut is from Japan Times Online:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20081015n2.html