Preliminary Report on the Current State of Mergers & Acquisitions in Japan

Richard Nakamura ()
Additional contact information
Richard Nakamura: European Institute of Japanese Studies, Postal: Stockholm School of Economics, P.O. Box 6501, S-113 83 Stockholm, Sweden

No 140, EIJS Working Paper Series from Stockholm School of Economics, The European Institute of Japanese Studies

Abstract: In recent years, the pattern of M&As in Japan has changed significantly. Increasingly, managers and owners of Japanese firms seem to have realized that there are efficiency benefits with M&As, and that there exist strategic dimensions in doing M&As. Almost on a daily basis, newspapers report on new M&A deals, involving all industries in the country. However, the skepticism to M&As is still very deep-rooted, and there are fewer Out-In M&As than In-In M&As. The distribution of M&A activities among the industrial sectors is extremely uneven, as well as the distribution of the type of M&A. Overall, acquisitions and capital participation are the most common modes of M&A. Looking closer, the pattern of M&A depends on the industry and the competition situation in that particular industry. Further, in studying Japanese M&As, a distinction between large firms and small- and medium-sized firms is necessary. The reason for this is the difference in nature between these two groups of firms. While large firms are international enough to recognize a foreign firm as a suitable M&A partner or buyer, SMFs make M&A decisions out of a different set of perceptions. Therefore, the M&A behavior becomes more diverse in the latter group than in the large firms sector. The conclusions of this paper are twofold. First, apart from the M&A pattern itself, the cultural factors heavily influence the M&A decisions of all firms in Japan. Second, the future of Out-In M&As is much dependent on how much the Japanese economic performance improves.

Keywords: Japan; Mergers & Acquisitions; Keiretsu; Small-and Medium-sized firms. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F23 G34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2002-02-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent and nep-sea
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://swopec.hhs.se/eijswp/papers/eijswp0140.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:eijswp:0140

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in EIJS Working Paper Series from Stockholm School of Economics, The European Institute of Japanese Studies The European Institute of Japanese Studies, Stockholm School of Economics, P.O. Box 6501, 113 83 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nanhee Lee ().