Yotsuba Corporation

Headquartered in Tokyo, Yotsuba ranks among the world's heavyweight conglomerates, its payroll topping three hundred thousand people. The company stretches across a broad spread of fields, taking in heavy industry, technology, residential homes, resort building, and more besides. Its grimmest distinction is the man running its technology arm, Kyosuke Higuchi, who secretly serves as Kira and kills off the leadership of competing firms to clear Yotsuba's path.

By 2004 the presidency of the company had passed to Dainosuke Yotsuba. The following year, eight of its senior figures began assembling once a week with a single grim agenda: choosing who should die. It was an open secret among them that one of their number was Kira, able to strike down anyone at will, and each session they singled out leaders of rival businesses whose deaths would feed Yotsuba's expansion.

The enterprise predates 1994 and runs a wide internal map of divisions, from sales and personnel to financial and material planning, rights, and marketing. Its reach crosses the Pacific by way of an American branch, a division headed by the father of executive Reiji Namikawa.

At the top sits company president Dainosuke Yotsuba, with his illegitimate son Arayoshi Hatori serving as marketing vice president. The killer in their midst, Kyosuke Higuchi, runs technology development, while Reiji Namikawa heads sales and Takeshi Ooi leads the VT Enterprises arm. The remaining seats belong to Shingo Mido over corporate strategy and financial planning, Eiichi Takahashi across material planning and Yotsuba Homes, Suguru Shimura atop personnel, and Masahiko Kida handling rights and planning.

Two outsiders are pulled into Yotsuba's orbit as well. The detective Eraldo Coil, in truth one of L's aliases, is hired to dig out L's real identity, while Misa Amane is brought on as the face of an advertising campaign.