Japanese Takeovers: The Global Contest for Corporate Control

By Harvard Business School Press and W. Carl Kester

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0875842356
• ISBN13: 9780875842356
• Release Date: November 1990
• Publisher: Harvard Business School Pr
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 1.0" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Japanese Takeovers

Throughout the 80's and the early `90s, a deeply ingrained myth existed in the American collective psyche that believed that; Japanese corporations, in collusion with Japanese government were bent over to control the US and world economy. A series of economic events further encouraged and fortified this belief. Among these events were financial success of Japanese corporations during a contractionary period in the US, followed by a series of acquisition of US companies by Japanese including some national cultural icons, the ever burgeoning US trade deficit and National debt, and the consistent complaint of US business leaders about the un-receptiveness of the Japanese economy to outside competition and acquisition. W.C Kester, attempts to answer few fundamental questions relevant to the Japanese M & A activity. The questions he attempts to answer include; Should nations be threatened by Japanese M & A activity? Should the Japanese be more proactive in opening up their system so that others gain access to M & A activity in Japan? What should policy makers and policy makers of other countries do about the issues? The search for these answers leads him into a complete analysis of the Japanese corporate governance system, which he defines as "the overall mechanism that coordinates the activities of Japanese corporation's various stakeholders such as lenders, shareholders, managers, employee, suppliers and customers". Through a historical case study of a company, he demonstrates how this system has evolved separate from the western culture and in the process enmeshed and optimized itself to and with the Japanese culture. He then discusses primary factors of this corporate governance mechanism which are; implicit contracting based on trust; reciprocal shareholding and implicit trading agreements between stakeholders; Management incentives based on overall growth rather than transfer of value between stakeholders and; Financial institutions as stakeholders and their early, selective power of active intervention. It becomes obvious to the reader, how an interwoven structure such as this makes redundant the need to acquire each other while; layers of cultural barriers make the system impermeable to foreign acquirers. The time series/case approach of the first part of the book puts the reader in touch with the origin and the reason behind the Japanese corporate culture. The subsequent few chapters use cases to demonstrate the amicable nature of mergers between Japanese companies; a characteristic that crosses borders when Japanese companies merge with foreign companies. The book then shifts to what the future of Japanese corporate governance will evolve to. Driving factors such as scarcity of growth opportunities, widening objectives among stakeholders, primarily between lenders and managers and, the increase in the inflow of global capital with differing objectives than the existing culture as three primary reasons