Pernille Rudlin - Rudlin Consulting

About Pernille Rudlin

Pernille Rudlin was brought up partly in Japan and partly in the UK. She is fluent in Japanese, and lived in Japan for 9 years.

She spent nearly a decade at Mitsubishi Corporation working in their London operations and Tokyo headquarters in sales and marketing and corporate planning and also including a stint in their International Human Resource Development Office.

More recently she had a global senior role as Director of External Relations, International Business, at Fujitsu, the leading Japanese information and communication technology company and the biggest Japanese employer in the UK, focusing on ensuring the company’s corporate messages in Japan reach the world outside.

Pernille Rudlin holds a B.A. with honours from Oxford University in Modern History and Economics and an M.B.A. from INSEAD and she is the author of several books and articles on cross cultural communications and business.

Since starting Japan Intercultural Consulting’s operations in Europe in 2004, Pernille has conducted seminars for Japanese and European companies in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, UAE, the UK and the USA, on Japanese cultural topics, post merger integration and on working with different European cultures.

Pernille is a non-executive director of Japan House London, an Associate of the Centre for Japanese Studies at the University of East Anglia and she is also a trustee of the Japan Society of the UK.

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Here are my most recent posts

Toppan to acquire Swedish Assa Abloy’s Citizen ID business

Toppan will acquire the Citizen ID business of HID Global Corporation, which is in turn owned by Sweden’s Assa Abloy. Although Assa Abloy is Swedish, HID Global is headquartered in the USA, and Toppan say they are acquiring it to expand their global security business in South America, Africa, and other regions. HID Global has operations in Czech Republic, Ireland, France, Poland, Switzerland and the UK – although to what extent these businesses will now be split up is not yet clear.

The acquisition is part of Toppan’s goal to pursue US$326m of overseas acquisitions by the end of fiscal 2025, shifting its business focus from printing to security and packaging. Toppan used its financial subsidiary set up in Singapore last year to secure stable financing for acquisitions and other investments for the acquisition of the CID business.

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Nippon Paint acquires US-Swiss specialty chemicals firm AOC for $2.3bn

Nippon Paint is acquiring AOC from private equity firm Lone Star, with the deal expected to finalise in the first half of next year.

AOC is a global manufacturer of coatings, colorants, and composite resins. It was known as AOC Aliansys until 2018 – a combination of US based AOC and Switzerland based Aliansys. Lone Star acquired AOC from CVC Capital Partners in 2021.

Nippon Paint has made other global acquisitions in recent years, including France’s Cromology and the DuluxGroup in Australia. The acquisition of AOC will add operations in Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the UK to Nippon Paint’s presence in Europe.

Nippon Paint had 33,000 employees in 2023, 89% of whom were based overseas.

Nippon Express acquires German logistics company Simon Hegele

Japanese logistics company Nippon Express has acquired German logistics company Simon Hegele Group. Simon Hegele Group has almost 2,800 employees in around 50 locations, mostly in Germany but also including the UK and Turkey. Simon Hegele is to continue with its current structure and management.

This adds to the acquisitions that Nippon Express made in 2023 of Austrian company Cargo-Partner and Switzerland based Tramo Group and the 3,500 employees of Nippon Express owned companies in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Japan’s Wacoal acquires UK’s Bravissimo

Japanese women’s underwear maker Wacoal Holdings will acquire UK headquartered Bravissimo Group for £45.7 ($61.3 million). Bravissimo is a retailer specialising in larger sizes, with both stores and an e-commerce side. It is mainly focused on the UK market, employing 458 people.

Wacoal acquired British lingerie manufacturer Eveden in 2012 which manufactures brands such as Fantasie and Freya, employing around 350 people in the UK and another 75 or so in France. It also has operations in New York, Australia and the Netherlands.

UK second largest recipient of Japanese overseas M&A deals – but far behind USA

We were surprised to see that the UK was second only to the USA as the location for Japanese overseas M&A deals in 2023, according to Recof, as the number and scale of deals we were aware of in the UK seemed to have died down considerably over the past 10 years. Then we looked more closely and realised that of the 660 overseas acquisitions Recof has recorded, 220 were in the USA, and only a fifth of that (44) in the UK. The third and fourth ranked countries were Singapore and India – so it was not a case that acquisitions were shifting to continental Europe either.

We have been aware of 16 acquisitions in the UK in 2023, mostly by the larger Japanese companies – logistics and food related acquisitions have been a particular focus. So it seems likely the other acquisitions were made by smaller Japanese companies. One such did cross our radar recently – Japanese entertainment company GENDA acquired Lemonade by Lemonica – another Japanese company, thereby acquiring Lemonade Lemonica UK. Lemonade Lemonica was, as you might imagine from the name, a drinks company. The UK operation was started in 2021 under the name Pino Pino Zaurus and has only 1 employee. GENDA have now established GENDA Europe, in the UK, to support the growth of Lemonade Lemonica, and because “the UK is one of the best places for Japanese companies to build their management base in terms of business environment and systems.” GENDA has been rolling up many Japanese entertainment related companies, so perhaps further acquisitions are to come, impacting Europe.

Japanese automotive supplier Denso acquires manufacturing license from British green hydrogen technology company Ceres

DENSO Corporation has signed a manufacturing license agreement with Ceres Power Holdings, a UK based developer of solid oxide cell stack technology. DENSO aims to advance the early practical application of Solid Oxide Electrolysis Cells that produce hydrogen through water electrolysis.

Denso has traditionally been a supplier to Toyota, a strong advocate of hydrogen fuel.

Mitsui establishes electromagnetic steel sheet processing company for EVs and power plants in Poland

Japanese trading company Mitsui & Co has announced that it will establish an electromagnetic steel sheet processing company, Polskamit Steel in Skarwimiez in southern Poland. Polskamit will process, stock, and inspect electromagnetic steel sheets used in motor cores for electric vehicles such as hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and battery electric vehicles (BEVs), as well as transformer cores used in power plants and substations. It is scheduled to start operations in April 2026.

Mitsui first established, in 1993, an electrical steel sheet processing company in the Netherlands and then in the Czech Republic. Mitsui also set up Mitsui High-Tec Poland in 2018, employing around 88 people, providing lamination press processing of in-vehicle motor cores for electric vehicles.

According to US research firm BloombergNEF, Poland is a major producer of lithium-ion batteries, ranking second in the world after China and first in Europe in terms of national battery production capacity in 2022.

Pernille Rudlin speaking on navigating workplace harassment and purpose at 24th September event in London

Pernille Rudlin will be speaking (in Japanese) on “Navigating Workplace Harassment and Purpose” on 24th September 2024 16:00 in London as part of a free HR seminar with Centre People and Lewis Silkin. You can use the QR code or email address as below to register.

Japanese shipping company NYK to invest in British-Irish sea urchin farming and biodiversity venture

Japanese shipping company NYK is investing in Urchinomics, a British-Irish venture which will feed up starving sea urchins so they can be sold for food – and also support biodiversity.

Kelp forests on the seabed are being eaten up by an overabundance of sea urchins. Kelp forests are “blue” carbon as they absorb and store CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and they also support marine biodiversity by providing a habitat for small fish and other aquatic life.

The lack of kelp food means that the sea urchins are not edible. Urchinomics will collect them, feed them on other natural food and then use the profits from sales of urchin (known as uni, a delicacy in Japan) to reinvest in collection of urchins but also restoration of the kelp forests.

A new job for the 21st century – urchin rancher.

Unidon photo By Totti – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68677193

Japanese car companies consolidate into two camps – in the UK too

Recent reports that Mitsubishi Motors is to join the Honda-Nissan alliance show that Japanese car companies are forming two camps – Toyota and Not-Toyota.

According to the Nikkei, Mitsubishi Motors, which is 34% owned by Nissan, will work with Honda and Nissan to finalise the details of their partnership on electric vehicle development, including standardising in-vehicle software that controls cars.

Even before the competitive pressures from China and Tesla in electric vehicles became apparent, what has happened to the Japanese car industry in the UK over the past decade has been an omen of what was to come. Mitsubishi Motors sold off its Nedcar operation in the Netherlands, its only manufacturing plant in Europe, to VDL in 2012. Nine years later it shut down its UK sales company, the Colt Car Company, a joint venture originally with Mitsubishi Corporation. In the same year, Honda shut down its Swindon plant, leading to several other automotive suppliers who were reliant on Honda withdrawing from the UK too. Honda’s European headquarters continues to be based in the UK, however.

Nissan’s commitment to the UK is clear from a recent announcement that it will lead MADE NE (Manufacturing, Automation, Digitalisation, Electrification North East) with local government partners to create open access training facilities in Sunderland, covering education from primary school to apprenticeships, with a particular focus on EV and battery manufacturing.

MADE NE will also support support targeted industrial innovation projects with funding and equipment.

Toyota has two “Lean Management” centres, at its plants in Burnaston, Derbyshire and Deeside in North Wales, open to any non-competitive organisation who wants to develop people and processes in the Toyota Way.

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