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

Toshiba launches quantum technology hub in Cambridge, UK

Toshiba launched its Quantum Technology Centre in Cambridge on 22nd September 2023. The centre has about 40 employees, with plans to expand the head count to 70. Toshiba will invest 20 million pounds ($25 million) in the facility over five years starting in fiscal 2023.

Toshiba already had a research laboratory in Cambridge, conducting research on artificial intelligence and quantum technology. Some engineers will transfer from there to the new quantum-specialized offshoot.

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My Japanese company family ten years’ on

I met up recently for a dinner in London with most of the members of a team of British and French people I worked with at a Japanese company, ten years ago. An event like this would not be so unusual in Japan, I suppose – an OB-kai (Old Boys’ party) – but it is not a regular occurrence in the UK. In more individualist societies, employees will not have joined the company as a cohort, nor left the company as a cohort on retirement. My team members did indeed join the Japanese company at different times and some have now retired. Some, like me, left of their own accord and others were made redundant.

What united us was the leader of the team, who had handpicked us to work together. He is now in his seventies, and active in U3A (a collection of charities providing education and self-improvement for those who no longer work) and has just moved house, in order to be closer to his grandchildren.

Family was a big theme of the evening with photos shared of children and grandchildren. Health of course was also a topic – one person, now a CEO, had recently undergone a triple bypass operation and been told he should not work full time again. We also talked of the impact on mental health of the pandemic on our children, one of whom had been diagnosed as autistic.

Of those who had retired, two were living in Portugal and one was active as a local councillor in the UK (and could not attend the dinner as he was campaigning). Another person who could not join us was living in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Three of us were working as independent consultants. One was about to start a part time MA in international relations – purely for the intellectual challenge rather than as a career move. He had turned down a senior role at Huawei, because he felt he could not build up the same level of trust that he had felt when he worked in a Japanese company.

Japan was still of interest to everyone. Even though he had been to Japan many times on business trips, one of the group decided to visit Japan again, but as a tourist, with his wife. They had such a wonderful time, they want to go again, to travel to the north and west.

So, as our team leader always used to insist when I wrote a press release or article – reflecting on ten years’ ago and now, what is the action point?

The project we were all working on ten years ago was to define more clearly the values and vision of our Japanese company, in order to bring employees together, globally. Ten years’ on, I still think this is a necessary step but new forces are dispersing employees – such as job mobility, the job gata system (introduction of job descriptions and specialization) and remote working. A good global leader will need to ensure that employees are drawn together again, in an environment where they can build enduring, trusting human relationships.

This article by Pernille Rudlin was first published in Japanese in the Teikoku News, 14th June 2023

Japan’s M3 acquires British medical staffing company Messly

Japan’s M3, a healthcare services company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market, has acquired UK start up Messly, a recruiting marketplace platform for U.K. doctors, for surgeries and hospitals to hire locums, or temporary doctors, at short notice. It was founded in 2017 and 70% of the UK’s trainee doctors are registered on it.

M3 has already acquired several healthcare software and services related companies in France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the UK since 2011 when it acquired doctors.net.uk. We estimate M3 has over 500 employees in Europe, out of 10,533 worldwide.

Japan owned British crypto currency firm B2C2 acquires France based Woorton

B2C2 was established in 2015 and acquired by Japanese company SBI (Strategic Business Innovator group, formerly part of SoftBank) in 2020. It employs around 90 people in the UK and also operates in the U.S., Cayman Islands, and Japan. The acquisition of Woorton means B2C2 not only expands its European operations but acquires Woorton’s PSAN license which is regulated by France’s financial market authority, the AMF. As a result, B2C2 can now cater to clients in the European Union, aligning with the upcoming MiCA regulations.

SBI is still operating in Russia as SBI Bank LLC, employing around 245 people.

Dentsu acquires Germany’s RCKT

Dentsu Group has acquired RCKT “a leading German digital-first brand, communications and creative agency”. RCKT will join the Dentsu Creative part of the Dentsu Group. The RCKT brand will be retained during a period of integration, becoming known as “RCKT, a Dentsu Creative Company” with immediate effect. Given the recent reorganisation of Dentsu, where companies have been consolidated under the Dentsu brand, we predict the RCKT name will not last long.

Dentsu now has around 3,200 employees in its DACH organisation. Dentsu Creative employs 9,000 people across 46 markets.

We estimate that Dentsu employs around 13,000 – 14,000 people in the EMEA region – however it does not disclose any numbers in its annual reports on this.

Nippon Express acquires Switzerland based Tramo Group

Japanese logistics group Nippon Express has made another acquisition in Europe, the Swiss based luxury furniture specialist, Tramo Group, via Nippon Express Italia. It had already acquired the Austrian company Cargo-Partner earlier this year and in 2018 it acquired Italian luxury fashion logistics services company Traconf, as well as Franco Vago. In 2012 it acquired Swedish company APC Logistics.

Nippon Express is aiming to generate half its revenue from overseas business by 2037, up from the current 30%. It currently has around 3,500 employees in Europe (out of 72,000 globally, of whom 42,500 are in Japan) and the acquisition of Tramo may add up to 500 to that total. Tramo has operations in Italy, the UK, Netherlands, France and Spain as well as in the USA.

What Japanese companies need to know about ecommerce in Europe

I was browsing in a second-hand bookshop in my neighbourhood recently – with some difficulty as most of the floor was covered in boxes of newly purchased books. This led to a conversation with the owner about he managed his stock. I said I supposed that he put online the stock that he did not have room to display. He replied he did not have a website – he had tried to use e-commerce during the pandemic but it proved to be unprofitable.

He found he could not compete with Amazon and Amazon’s second book arm, Abe Books, in terms of search engine rankings. He could sell his books via Abe Books, but there is fierce price competition and if the book is not rare, the margins are very small.

As I write this, I am watching a British online art auction. Almost all British art and antique auctions are now online, since the pandemic forced them to switch – and these auctions are now consolidated on a website called saleroom.com, which also has auctions from continental Europe and the USA. Buyers have returned to the auction room in person too – and I would certainly prefer to see art and antiques in person before bidding. For signed art by known artists with known provenance, it is of course less of a risk.

On the other hand, a son of a friend of mine has become very rich selling online, even though his products are cheap, no-brand, highly commoditised products – for example lint removers – and are manufactured in China. The secret to his success is his total obsession with data – even when he is on holiday he is checking sales volumes and competitor prices and ratings and tweaking his pricing and his social media advertising.

Many B2C companies in the UK have become entirely online, with no physical retail presence. This is partly because the overheads, particularly energy costs, have shot up recently, as well as labour shortages. But the most successful b2c online businesses started with a physical shop, to establish their brand.

It’s no surprise then that one of the most cited barriers for Japanese companies in a recent JETRO survey, particularly small-medium sized businesses, to growing their e-commerce sales in Europe, is their lack of brand recognition. For Japanese companies who are already selling overseas via e-commerce, the second largest concern after lack of information about overseas markets is the difficulty in increasing brand awareness overseas – even for the larger companies.

Over 20% of the Japanese companies in the JETRO survey wanted to expand their e-commerce sales to Europe. If physical presence in Europe is not possible, then the digital first solution would be to hire a European specialist marketing agency. If you have the budget and a strong brand, they can run advertising and social media campaigns for you. For smaller budgets, or a commoditized or B2B product, then a smaller local agency can recommend specialist consolidated EC websites, analyse your sales and marketing data and make recommendations on pricing and product positioning.

This article by Pernille Rudlin first appeared in Japanese in the Teikoku Databank News in May 2023

Hitachi divests UK’s Temple Lifts

Hitachi has sold Temple Lifts to private investor Rcapital, five years after acquiring it in 2017. Temple Lifts has 125 employees and is headquartered in Bromley, Greater London with two regional offices overseeing approximately 5,000 lifts and escalators under maintenance contracts, supporting customers across multiple sectors. This is the latest in a long series of divestments by Hitachi as it focuses its business portfolio on energy, digital and social infrastructure.

GMO Internet to close GMO-Z.COM London forex brokerage

Japan’s GMO Internet group was to sell off its GMO-Z.COM London based forex brokerage to Australia’s Invast Global as of October 2022. However, the Financial Conduct Authority did not approve the transfer of shares in March 2023 so Invast has cancelled the transaction. GMO Internet has disclosed in the latest annual report of GMO-Z.COM that it now intends to close the operation within the year. GMO-Z.COM was established in London in 2012 and employed 10 people, 17 at its peak in 2019. It was trying to shift from individual client services to institutional client services.

SMFG continues its restructuring in EMEA

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group is to merge its banking and securities businesses in the UK. SMBC Nikko Capital Markets plc will be transferred to SMBC Bank International over the next year. SMBC Bank International was renamed from Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation Europe in 2020 and has a branch in Paris. All other EU operations became branches of SMBC Bank EU AG, established in Germany. SMBC Bank International plc employs 1,561 people and SMBC Nikko Capital Markets plc employs 175, already half of the peak number of 378 employed in 2019/20.

SMFG claim this merger is to strengthen its offering to customers, and the numbers of people employed will remain the same. However, as the Nikkei points out, its medium-term management plan to FY2025 aims to reduce annual expenses by 25 billion yen and the workload of 500 people by improving the efficiency of overseas operations, such as reviewing the network of bases and integrating redundant functions.

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