ON his skiing holidays, Stuart Chambers tends to wear a gaudy, bright yellow all-in-one outfit, so that he can be easily spotted by his family on the slopes.

He will have to become even more used to being conspicuous after his promotion last week to chief executive of Nippon Sheet Glass (NSG), the Japanese industrial group.

Chambers, 51, who joined NSG when the glassmaker acquired British manufacturer Pilkington in June 2006, where he had been the chief executive for four years, is one of a handful of foreigners to make it to the upper echelons of management in a Japanese concern.

The British executive joins the likes of Sir Howard Stringer at Sony and Carlos Ghosn at Nissan in smashing through the “bamboo ceiling”. Chambers’ appointment has already raised eyebrows, with many observers wondering how it is that the Pilkington boss is taking the top job when it was NSG that led the takeover rather than the other way round.

He said: “We do pick up a concern that people like myself might ride a bit roughshod over a way of business that has been going on for a long time and might change too much, too quickly, which would be counter-productive.”

Despite the concerns, there is a growing recognition, said Chambers, that some Japanese business practices ought to change, particularly on human resources.

For example, it is common practice that managers’ progression up the career ladder is more often determined by age and length of service rather than merit.

It is also vital that the same HR policies are applied across all the business’s markets, rather than having different practices for different territories. Otherwise, Chambers said: “Every time you try to relocate someone, you get a right mess on your hands.”

The new NSG boss, who will spend half his time in Japan after he takes up his position in June, said the acquisition of Pilkington was proving a test case for other Japanese companies.

The sheet-glass maker had taken on a significant amount of debt to fund the £2.2 billion purchase, which transformed it from a business with 80% of its sales generated at home, to an international concern operating in 28 countries.

Current debt stands at around Y330 billion (£1.6 billion), down from Y500 billion at the time of the Pilkington deal.

Chambers, who will retain his nonexecutive role on the board of Smiths Group, the engineering group, said: “There’s a lot of interest in this model where a Japanese public company with leverage buys a large international company, globalises through that route and makes it a success. Japan Inc is asking: ‘Are we going to do that or wake up in 30 years with the reverse having happened?’.”

He said that while NSG’s experience with Pilkington had so far been a positive one: “It’s not something they will leap into lightly”.

He added: “They would regard the jury as being out and the story is so far, so good. Two years is a long time in corporate Britain or America, but in Japan, it’s just a blip. It has been a success so far but some of these management changes are quite brave and people are waiting to see it work.”

Part of the problem, according to Chambers, is that the Japanese value a company’s relationship with its shareholders far below that which they have with customers and staff. (In the interests of balance, he points out that British companies have probably gone too far the other way, putting too much emphasis on investor relations.)

In the meantime, while he smoothes out the cultural differences that will inevitably arise, Chambers has more pressing issues to deal with, not least rising energy prices and a global economic downturn that will hit many of NSG’s clients.

The Japanese company is to present its annual results next month, so Chambers declined to comment on what those would show, but he said the outlook, at least in the near-term was fairly grim. “This financial year, which we’ve just started, is going to be tough.”

The most significant issue would be dealing with the rising oil price, which pushed up the cost of the gas and electricity to run NSG’s plants. “It’s really very significant indeed,” he said. “At the beginning of this year, we were expecting [the price, allowing for our hedging policies,] to be around $100 per barrel, but it’s now around $110, $120.”

Another problem looming is the outcome of an investigation by the European competition regulators into the glass industry. A probe into glass for the building products market has been resolved, but the European Commission has yet to announce its findings into an examination of the automotive glass sector. NSG has already made a balance-sheet provision allowing for the worst.

While this year will be challenging, Chambers said he remained confident that the group would meet the goals laid out in its medium-term plan, taking the group to 2011.

Without elaborating, he said there were opportunities to grow sales that would enable the company to hit its targets.

With a sceptical domestic audience to win over, Chambers will be hoping he can find the bullseye.

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