As Ivanka Trump sat in on a November meeting with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, she was reportedly finishing up a deal between her clothing brand and Sanei International.
Ivanka’s licensing deal with the clothing company has been on the table for nearly two years, according to a report published Sunday in The New York Times.
The largest shareholder of Sanei is the Development Bank of Japan, which is operated by the government. A private showing of Ivanka’s products was already underway in Tokyo as the 35-year-old listened in on the meeting between President-elect Donald Trump and Prime Minister Abe at Trump Tower.
“At the moment, Ivanka is even more popular here than Mr. Trump,” Sayumi Gunji, a lifestyle-magazine editor who attended the event, told the Times.
The deal with Sanei is the result of an existing relationship between the apparel company and Abigail Klem, an Ivanka Trump executive who previously worked for Diane von Furstenberg, a label that Sanei licenses in Japan.
According to Ivanka’s team, the terms of the agreement had already been decided before the November 8 elections.
The Trump family has raised eyebrows for conflicts of interest that will certainly take effect as the President-elect takes office in January 2017. Trump also promised to take himself away from his role at Trump Organization and hand all aspects of operations to his there children Ivanka, Eric Trump, 32, and Donald Trump, Jr., 38.
The President-elect said in a series of tweets on November 30 that he would be holding a news conference on December 15 regarding “leaving my great business in total in order to fully focus on running the country.”
“While I am not mandated to do this under the law,” Trump wrote, “I feel it is visually important, as president, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses.”
Image via Flickr / Michael Vadon
