One trend that emerged in 1991 was that the presidents of some of these new subsidiaries, who were themselves former NYK career employees, were appointed to the company's board of directors. This was a departure from the pattern of most of the postwar period, when the board was composed almost exclusively of executives from within NYK itself. These strategies, therefore, had the potential to change the company's structure to reflect the broadening base of company operations. Most of these subsidiaries, however, supported shipping itself. This suggested that, in contrast to the pattern of diversification followed by British shipping firms, where shipping operations have shrunk to a small portion of their overall business, NYK was not moving far from its core business of shipping.