Hakuhodo DY Holdings Inc. (Minato-ku, Tokyo; Hirokazu Toda, President & CEO) is pleased to announce that its strategic operating unit kyu has acquired a majority equity stake in Canadian consulting firm BEworks Inc.
Founded in Toronto, Canada, in 2010, BEworks (pronounced as "bee-E-works") is a consulting firm that specializes in applying behavioral economics1 to solving business challenges. Its team of specialists in the fields of behavioral science, cognitive and social psychology, and neuroscience diagnoses the consumer mindset in light of scientific evidence and recommends and validates solutions to operational challenges like marketing, new product development, and pricing.

• 1 Behavioral economics is a branch of economics dedicated to investigating how people make choices and behave, and what happens as a result, by focusing on experimenting with and observing actual people. It explores how people act and make decisions, working on the premise that they do not necessarily do so rationally. Behavioral economics has lately become the focus of great interest in the West, and many companies have their own in-house research teams dedicated to applying it for commercial purposes.

The Hakuhodo DY Group has, in our current Medium Term Business Plan, identified a key driver of growth2 as the acquisition of and investment in specialist creative service groups that offer advanced brand-building methods and solutions. The investment in BEworks is part of that endeavor.

• 2 Hakuhodo DY Holdings' three Key Drivers: (1) Strengthening of sei-katsu-sha driven marketing response capabilities, (2) strengthening of business
  structures in emerging countries, particularly Asia, (3) continuous enhancement of specialization and
  innovation

Six corporate groups, including design firms and consulting companies in the United States and Canada, have joined the kyu collective since its establishment in 2014.

The Hakuhodo DY Group, through kyu, will continue to enhance specialization and innovation within the Group in order to realize our basic medium-term strategies. These are to be among the world's leading creative service groups; to be our clients' most important brand-building partner; and to create new markets and movements to continuously invigorate society and sei-katsu-sha through our new, advanced creative solutions.

BEworks will also contribute to the growth of the Group's international operations going forward, although the impact of the investment in BEworks on consolidated performance in the year ending March 31, 2017 will not be material.