Japanese companies shopping abroad for takeovers are running up a record bill so far this year, as they pounce on opportunities to grab market share presented by falls in global stock prices. Once considered slow and likely to overpay, the Japanese are becoming more savvy, though the jury is still out on how well they manage their acquisitions.
In the latest cases, drug maker Shionogi & Co. Ltd. said Monday it is buying Atlanta-based Sciele Pharma Inc. for $1.1 billion in cash, while London-based Change Capital Partners agreed to sell luxury fashion house Jil Sander to Onward Holdings Co. of Japan for 167 million euros ($245 million).
In the past week, Japan has overtaken China as this year's biggest buyer of foreign firms in the Asian-Pacific region.
The trend seems to be gathering momentum as many Japanese firms fear losing key clients and falling behind their peers because they don't have a global network. On top of that, shareholder activists are increasing pressure on managers to put their companies' huge cash piles to work.
'M&A is starting to achieve critical mass. As the biggest Japanese firms build market share in the U.S., their suppliers feel the need to follow them,' said Kenneth Siegel, managing partner at Morrison & Foerster LLP in Tokyo. The law firm is helping a supplier of Toyota Motor Corp. expand in the U.S. through mergers and acquisitions.
Japanese acquisitions of foreign companies total $43.3 billion year-to-date, a record for the period and nearly twice that for all of 2007, according to financial data researchers at Thomson Reuters. U.S. companies are their targets of choice, with Indian companies a distant second.
In the late 1980s, when their balance sheets were bloated by inflated stock and real-estate prices, Japanese companies snapped up U.S. firms en masse. After the bubbles popped, many of the buyers ran into difficulty and some were nearly bankrupted by their splurge.
The Japanese piled back into the U.S. at the zenith of the technology bubble around the turn of the millennium; one of the biggest deals was NTT DoCoMo Inc.'s purchase of a stake in AT&T Wireless in January 2001 for $9.8 billion. But NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest cellphone service operator, subsequently had to heavily write down the investment.
Japanese companies are also picking their acquisitions more carefully than in the past, when they bought trophy assets such as New York's Rockefeller Center and California's Pebble Beach golf course. Earlier this year, Daiichi Sankyo Co., a major Japanese pharmaceutical company, unveiled plans to buy a majority stake in India's biggest drug maker by sales, Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd., for as much as $4.6 billion, giving Daiichi a foothold in the fast-growing generic-drug market and extending its global reach.
Although still not as fast on executing a deal as many U.S. companies, the Japanese are speeding up. Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., which paid $8.8 billion to acquire U.S. biotech firm Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc. in April, needed just 14 days to get to a merger agreement from a pact to negotiate exclusively with the American company.
In the past, Japanese companies shied away from competing in auctions and for listed firms, preferring to make exclusive arrangements with private companies and paying in cash. After about 15 years of paying down debt, Japanese companies still tend to pay cash, but recently they have also been winning auctions for public companies -- a sign they are becoming more familiar with Western M&A techniques.
Copier and printer maker Ricoh Co. announced the acquisition of Pennsylvania-based office-equipment distributor Ikon Office Solutions last week for $1.62 billion, after a competitive auction. The deal puts Ricoh's much larger rival Canon Inc. under pressure to follow suit, analysts say.
However, many Japanese companies have developed headaches the morning after the deal. A key problem has been lack of clarity on who is responsible for the acquired business. The issue has been compounded by the Japanese culture's emphasis on consensus decision-making, meaning the country has few executives with strong leadership qualities to take firm control of large Western firms. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. had a tense, combative relationship with the management of Hollywood movie studio MCA Inc. and eventually sold its 80% stake in 1995.
But Japanese companies are learning and are making an effort to keep the incumbent team happy and motivated. Takeda paid many of Millennium Pharmaceuticals' 1,000 employees retention bonuses to stay on for at least 12 months. That came on top of the cash that employees could get by exercising their stock options.
'This makes the initial investment more expensive, but it's something that will definitely pay off,' Takeda President Yasuchika Hasegawa said in an interview after the takeover.
In Shionogi's acquisition of Sciele Pharma, the Sciele management team will remain in place.
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面对全球股市下挫带来的投资良机，日本公司在海外大举收购，不断扩大市场份额；今年以来，日本公司的海外收购规模创下历史新高。一度被视为行动迟缓且往往出价过高的日本公司正变得越来越精明，虽然他们对所收购业务的管理能力还有待观察。
最近的几起交易案中，日本制药商Shionogi & Co.周一表示，计划斥资11亿美元现金收购总部位于亚特兰大的Sciele Pharma Inc.。此外，总部位于伦敦的Change Capital Partners同意作价1.67亿欧元（2.45亿美元）将豪华时尚品牌Jil Sander出售给日本的Onward Holdings Co.。
过去一周，日本已经超过中国，成为今年亚太地区最大的海外收购投资者。
由于许多日本公司担心自己可能会因为没有全球网络而失去重要客户，落后于竞争对手，这种海外收购的势头似乎正日益加强。此外，股东权益活动家也不断向企业管理层施加压力，要求将公司巨大的现金储备发挥作用。
律师事务所Morrison & Foerster LLP驻东京合伙人西盖尔(Kenneth Siegel)表示，并购交易正开始出现集群效应；随着日本大企业纷纷在美国市场扩大份额，它们的供应商也觉得应该追随客户在海外扩展。这家事务所正在协助丰田汽车(Toyota Motor Corp.)的一家供应商通过并购交易扩展美国市场。
根据汤森路透(Thomson Reuters)的财务数据，今年以来日本企业的海外收购总规模达到了433亿美元，创下历史同期之最，几乎是去年全年的两倍。在日本公司眼中，美国企业是头号交易目标，印度公司排在次席。
八十年代末，日本公司也曾大肆收购美国公司，当时虚高的股价和房价使得日本公司的资产负债表不断膨胀。但好景不长，日本经济泡沫破灭后，许多大举扩展的公司陷入困境，一些公司还因为此前的过度投资而濒临破产。
世纪之交，科技股泡沫达到顶峰之时，日本公司再次重回美国市场；当时最大的一桩交易是NTT移动通讯(NTT DoCoMo Inc.)在2001年1月斥资98亿美元收购AT&T Wireless部分股份。不过，这家日本最大的无线运营商随后就不得不面临投资大幅缩水的惨痛局面。
不过，日本公司已经吸取了教训，如今在选择海外收购时比过去更谨慎了；过去，日本公司曾收购纽约洛克菲勒中心(Rockefeller Center)和加利福尼亚卵石滩高尔夫球场等标志性资产。今年早些时候，日本大型制药公司Daiichi Sankyo Co.计划投资至多46亿美元收购印度销量最大的制造公司Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd.的多数股权；这一交易将使Daiichi得以进入增长迅速的仿制药市场，扩展全球业务范围。
尽管在达成交易的速度上仍比不上许多美国公司，但日本公司在这方面已经有了明显提高。今年4月份，Takeda Pharmaceutical Co.投资88亿美元收购美国生物科技公司Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc.，只用了14天时间就完成了从同意独家谈判到达成合并协议的全过程。
日本公司过去通常不愿参与拍卖竞购和收购上市公司，而倾向于与私有公司达成独家协议并以现金交易。经过约15年的现金偿债后，日本公司目前仍然倾向于支付现金，不过近期他们也愿意通过拍卖竞购上市公司，这是日本公司逐渐熟悉西方并购手段的一个迹象。
复印机和打印机制造商理光(Ricoh Co.)上周宣布，通过竞购拍卖斥资16.2亿美元收购总部位于宾夕法尼亚州的办公设备分销商Ikon Office Solutions。分析师们表示，理光此项交易将给其规模较大的竞争对手佳能(Canon Inc.)带来压力，迫使它不得不效仿。
不过，许多日本公司在交易之后随即就会面临难题，在由谁管理收购业务缺的问题上暧昧不清。由于日本文化侧重集体决策，因此日本一直缺乏具有出色领导才能&#12289;能够掌控大型西方公司的管理精英；这进一步加重了海外收购的管理问题。松下电器产业公司(Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.)就曾经与收购的好莱坞制片厂MCA Inc.管理层关系紧张&#12289;暗斗不断，最后只能在1995年出售了它所持的80%股份。
但日本公司也在不断总结提高，并采取措施保持收购业务管理团队的士气和干劲。Takeda向Millennium Pharmaceuticals的1,000名员工中的许多人支付了留职奖金，换取他们至少继续在公司工作12个月。此外，这些员工行使股票期权还能获得现金。
Takeda总裁Yasuchika Hasegawa在交易完成后接受采访时表示，虽然这加大了初期投资规模，但这是笔值得的投资，肯定会有所回报的。
Shionogi收购Sciele Pharma后，Sciele原管理层将留任。
