Founded in 1961, it currently consists of 25 major corporations.
Of these, Mitsui Bank, Mitsui & Co. and Mitsui Fudosan Co. are the three mainstays of the consortium.
The core companies are Sakura Bank, Mitsui & Co., Shin-Oji Paper, Toshiba, Sony, Sanyo, NEC, Toyota Motor, Mitsukoshi, Toray and Mitsui Fudosan.
The consortium has strengths in the chemical, heavy machinery, general electric machinery, automobile manufacturing, real estate, nuclear power generation, semiconductors, medical and office electronic equipment industries. The board of directors is known as the "Futagi-kai" ("Futagi-kai" is a meeting held on the second Thursday of every month, and "ki" is the Japanese word for Thursday (木曜日)). Ki").