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

Germany’s AEQUITA acquires German subsidiary of Japan’s Nifco

AEQUITA has added another Japanese company to its collection, following its acquisition of Nisshinbo’s TMD Friction last year. It will acquire the German subsidiary of Nifco, which was itself a German company KTW, acquired by Nifco in 2014. Nifco Germany develops and produces injection-molded plastic components for the automotive industry, with around 766 employees in Germany, as well as operations in the USA and Serbia.

We assume this acquisition does not impact Nifco UK (which was Elta Plastics, acquired in 1990) or Nifco Poland, which we believe to be a greenfield investment. Nifco had already sold its Spanish subsidiary to Grupo Taurus in 2022.

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What do Nissan’s partnerships with Honda and Mitsubishi Corporation mean for Europe? Not a lot.

Honda and Nissan signing a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding on producing key components for electric vehicles and artificial intelligence in automotive software platforms is a further sign that Japanese car manufacturers are drawing their horns in and regrouping to focus on the Japanese domestic market.

It is also further evidence that Nissan’s alliance with Renault is rapidly withering away. As part of the capital restructuring, Nissan was meant to be investing €600m in Renault’s EV subsidiary Ampere. Renault announced in February 2024, however, that they would not float Ampere after all. Renault also announced in February that they were discussing EV platform sharing with Volkswagen.

Now Nissan have just announced that they have signed another MOU – with Mitsubishi Corporation – “to explore a new joint initiative in next-generation-mobility and energy-related services utilizing electric vehicles (EVs) to contribute to solving regional societal issues and to creating vibrant future communities”. Mitsubishi Corporation owns 20% and Nissan owns 34% of Mitsubishi Motors- the junior partner in the Nissan and Renault alliance.

What unites all of these announcements is the threat from China of cheap EVs. The response has been very regional – Honda was meant to be tying up with GM, but now it looks like Honda, Nissan and Mitsubishi group companies (and also Hitachi) are huddling together, and back in Europe, Renault and Volkswagen are getting cosy. So we can’t expect to see Honda to return to manufacturing in Europe yet – but we may see the fruits of the collaboration with Honda being assembled in Nissan plants in Europe, and if the regional initiatives in Japan on mobility, autonomous driving and renewable energy come to fruition, perhaps versions of this may find their way to Europe.

Mitsubishi Pencil acquires German pen maker Lamy

Mitsubishi Pencil has acquired the Germany company, C. Josef Lamy GmbH. Mitsubishi Pencil say they made the acquisition in order to expand overseas and move into higher price ranges, as the stationery market in Japan is expected to shrink amid the country’s falling birth rate and digitalization efforts.

Mitsubishi Pencil was already present in Europe – with headquarters in France and operations in the UK and Spain, employing around 100 people in total – they are most well known for their uni-ball rollerball pens. Lamy has around 380 employees.

Another area of collaboration is likely to be digital writing technology.

Sony Interactive Entertainment to cut jobs and studios in Europe and globally

Sony Group has announced that it will cut approximately 900 jobs, or 8% of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s workforce. The company will reduce the number of employees working at its game development studios in all regions of the world, including Europe, America, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific region.

The layoffs affect a number of PlayStation studios, including Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Guerrilla, Firesprite, and it seems likely PlayStation’s London studio will be closed, following consultation.

London based Newcastle born Sony Interactive Entertainment boss Jim Ryan called it a “difficult day at our company.” He announced his retirement last year, citing the difficulties of living in Europe and working in the USA.

Sony Group’s game business has annual sales of over 4 trillion yen, making it the largest business in terms of sales. However, sales of game consoles are currently sluggish, and profitability declining due to rising development costs. The plan was to sell 25 million units of the PlayStation 5 home game console in the fiscal year ending March 2024, but this was revised downward to 21 million units on February 14th.

This news come during one of the most difficult periods the game industry has ever faced, with mass layoffs throughout 2023 and continuing into 2024.

Yusen Logistics acquires UK Enterprise Carrier Management company Global Freight Solutions

Yusen Logistics, part of the NYK Group, has acquired Noel Topco, which in turn owns Global Freight Solutions, via its subsidiary International Logistics Group. Yusen Logistics acquired ILG in 2018 bringing in omnichannel fulfilment solutions for e-commerce brands, with operations in 13 bespoke facilities in the UK and EU. GFS adds to this “advanced multi-carrier ECM technology, including higher checkout conversion, reduced cart abandonment and increased repeat-purchase.”

The NYK Group of companies in the UK now employ over 2,500 people, of which Yusen Logistics UK is the largest employer – the 14th biggest Japan owned company in the UK by our estimates, with 1,692 employees. ILG has 479 employees and Noel Topco 156.

Yusen Logistics sees this acquisition as part of their strategy to differentiate themselves from other companies by adding new platform services. “Our group aims to further grow our logistics business by building a solid business foundation in the e-commerce market, which is expected to continue expanding.”

UPDATE – in presumably related news, Yusen Logistics has announced it is investing £280m to acquire a new net zero warehouse in Northampton from real estate company SEGRO group, scheduled to open in April 2025.

Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group to double UK underwriting

Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group acquired Amlin (now MS Amlin) in 2016 for £3.2bn but fell into the red since due to a series of natural disasters. The company has shed around 500 employees in the UK since, and now employs around 856 people. It also has operations in France, Singapore, Netherlands and Belgium.

Its latest medium-term plan through to March 2026 shows that it seeks to generate about 30% of group profit from overseas markets, triple the roughly 10% share in the previous financial year ended March 2023. It has strengthened risk management and governance at MS Amlin and has set a goal of nearly doubling insurance underwriting capacity in the next five years through Lloyds.

Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group currently has two foreign nationals in executive officer positions and intends to “increase the weight of foreign executives” to bolster management in Western regions, says CEO Funabiki. Philip Hammond, the former British Chancellor of the Exchequer now serves as a senior adviser to Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance.

Fast Retailing to expand in Europe

Fast Retailing, the owner of the Uniqlo brand, is intending to launch its sister brand GU in Europe. GU is pronounced ji-yuu, which means freedom in Japanese. It is aimed at the 10 to 30 year old age bracket, and is slightly cheaper than the Uniqlo brand. GU already opened a pop-up store in New York City’s SoHo district in 2022. It is also intending to open 10 new Uniqlo stores a year in Europe.

Fast Retailing currently has 115 stores in Europe, of which 54 are Uniqlo – 27 in France and 17 in the UK, with the rest in Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and Luxembourg. Uniqlo employs over 3,700 people in the region. The other Fast Retailing brands are Theory, Helmut Lang, Comptoir des Cotonniers and Princesse tam tam.

Japanese companies whose stock prices have increased by more than fortyfold since Japan’s stock market peak in 1989 – are they in Europe?

The Nikkei has just published a list of Japanese companies whose stock price increased tenfold or more over the past 34 years. Many are in advanced technology manufacturing, food, retail and digital services and with a few exceptions, their overseas expansion, if any, has not included Europe. Foreign investors were keen to support rapidly growing, lesser known companies – the Nikkei article specifically mentions Baillie Gifford’s Shin Nippon Trust, as it was started during Japan’s Bubble Era, in 1985. Shin Nippon’s share price has increased fivefold since 1989. The top 20 below have all seen their share prices rise by fortyfold or more since 1989.

At number one is Zensho, a food, catering and restaurant company – their share price is 236 times higher than it was in 1989. It has ambitions to be the world’s number one food company and acquired Snowfox in the UK in 2023. Snowfox owns Taiko, who make sushi for Waitrose and Sainsburys and also owns the YO! Sushi restaurant chain, as well as chains in the USA and Canada. As a consequence Zensho is now the third largest Japan owned company in the UK.

Lasertec is in second place with its share price increasing by a multiple of 176 since 1989. It designs, manufactures and sells semiconductor-related devices and other devices. It has subsidiaries in Asia and the USA but not in the EMEA region.

Third is Line Yahoo – LINE is a messaging app, and recently merged with Yahoo Japan. There is a Line Euro-Americas Corp in Los Angeles, which had a partnership with Telefonica in 2014, and subsidiaries in Asia, but apart from that, not much operationally in EMEA.

Fast Retailing, the owner of Uniqlo is at 4, and of course has many outlets across Europe employing around 3,700 people.

Pan Pacific International in fifth place is the owner of the famous Don Quijote (known as Donki) discount store. Apart from the name, it does not undertake much European activity. There are Donki shops in Asia and USA (Hawaii) and Pan Pacific also owns the Californian supermarket chain store Gelsons.

Nitori Holdings at #6 is a furniture store chain – outlets in Asia but nowhere else overseas.

CyberAgent at #7 covers media business, game business, Internet advertising business and investment development business – and has subsidiaries in Asia and the USA but as far as we are aware has not been active in Europe.

Keyence – who develop and manufacture equipment and solutions for factory automation, sensors, measuring instruments, vision systems, barcode readers, laser markers and digital microscopes is at #8 with over a 1,000 employees in Europe – over 600 in Germany and regional headquarters in Belgium.

Harmonic Drive‘s regional headquarters are in Germany (the result of an acquisition), employing over 300 people, with a sales operations in the UK. It engineers and manufactures precision servo actuators, gearheads and gear component sets. #9

Disco, a manufacturer of semiconductor equipment and precision tools, also has its regional headquarters in Germany, with operations in the UK, France and Morocco. #10

11. Adastria – a clothing retailer – in Asia.

12. MonotaRO – e-commerce company of industrial supply products – subsidiaries in South Korea, Indonesia, India

13. Kobe Bussan – a food company with subsidiaries in Egypt, Myanmar and China

14. CTS – Construction Total Support Service

15. Systena – total solutions and services from system planning and design to development, introduction, maintenance and user support

16. Rorze – subsidiaries in Germany, Asia, USA. Development, manufacture and sale of motor control equipment, semiconductor-related equipment and flat panel display (FPD) -related equipment.

17. Takeuchi manufacturing – subsidiaries in Germany, France, UK, Netherlands – excavators, loaders, dumpers.

18. Monogatari Corporation – restaurant chain with the management philosophy “Smile and Sexy” – yes really.

19. Tokyo Electron – which we already featured in our top 5 Japanese companies who grew the most in the UK 2023.

20. Transaction – seems to design and distribute various consumer gadgets – watch out for the badly functioning English language website and constant requests to check you are human. Appears to have vape shops in the USA and 2 subsidiaries in Asia.

Top Japan owned UK companies for growth in 2023

There are over 1,200 Japan-owned companies in the UK employing around 174,000 people. The number employed grew around 2% from 2022 to 2023.*

The top 5 Japanese companies** that have grown the most in the UK 2022-2023 are:

1. Dentsu UK/Dentsu International

Advertising and marketing giant Dentsu has two main subsidiaries in the UK – Dentsu UK and Dentsu International. Dentsu has been undergoing a period of consolidation globally, known as One Dentsu, becoming a holding company Dentsu Group Inc in Japan, and in the UK many of its acquisitions and also local companies such as Dentsu Manchester and Dentsu Edinburgh have been closed down and hived up into Dentsu UK.

In 2023 Dentsu Group Inc acquired UK marketing company Tag, one of its biggest acquisitions since it acquired Aegis in 2012. Tag has over 2,700 employees worldwide.

The number of employees at Dentsu UK has grown 66% since 2022 and turnover has grown 51% year on year. This growth is not just due to consolidation, however, as the entire Dentsu group of companies in the UK now employ over 5,000 people, a third more than in 2022, representing around 7% of the global Dentsu workforce – compared to the average for the biggest Japanese companies in the UK of around 2% of the global workforce. Dentsu employs over 17,000 in the EMEA region, around 27% of its global workforce – considerably above the average of 14% for the biggest Japanese companies in EMEA.

None of the Dentsu UK board directors are Japanese and there is one Japanese director, Arinobu Soga, Chief Governance Officer based in Japan, on the Dentsu International board.

2. Hitachi Solutions Europe

Hitachi Solutions Europe is one of the few Hitachi companies left standing in the UK after Hitachi’s aggressive divestments over the past few years. It is a global cloud-services, systems integrator focused on the Microsoft platform. The UK subsidiary is owned by Hitachi Solutions America. As a result, three of the 7 board members (2 Japanese, 1 American) are based in the USA. Two Japanese board members are based in Japan and two directors (one British and one Australian) are based in the UK.

It now employs 555 people in the UK, up 38% from the previous year and turnover has also increased, by 55%.

Overall the number of people employed by Hitachi group companies in the UK has fallen over 40% over the past 4 or 5 years thanks to the divestments and shut down of the Horizon nuclear power project. The employee numbers in the UK only represent 1.4% of Hitachi’s total global employees, lower than the average for other large Japanese companies in Europe of 2.4%. Employee numbers have increased 7% across the EMEA region, mainly due to the acquisition of ABB Power Grids, now Hitachi Energy and represent around 9% of the global total.

Hitachi Energy (formerly ABB Power Grids) is also growing, now employing over 400 people in the UK. The biggest Hitachi group subsidiary in the UK is Hitachi Rail which has over 2,700 employees, a 5% increase on 2022. Hitachi Vantara has 574 employees, expanding since Hitachi Consulting was merged into it in 2021.

There is still a Hitachi Europe in the UK, employing around 330 people, which coordinates the import of Hitachi consumer electronics and other products, as well as providing shared services in the region. There are also Hitachi Europes in Germany (84 employees), Italy (32 employees), France (15 employees) and Spain. Hitachi Europe in the UK has one Japanese board member, based in Japan and the most senior board member is Lorena Dellagiovanna, who is also based in Japan and is Chief Sustainability Officer and SVP.

3. Hawk-Eye Innovations (Sony)

Hawk-Eye Innovations was acquired by Sony in 2011 and has been growing almost every year since. It now employs 529 people in the UK, up 34% on the previous year. Turnover has only grown 4% however. Of the five directors on the board, 2 are Japanese, one in Japan, one in the UK. The other three are British, based in the UK,

It’s hard to give an accurate estimate of Sony’s overall presence in the UK as three of the main subsidiaries – Sony Mobile Communications, Sony Europe and the Sony UK Technology Centre in Pencoed are branches and do not therefore file annual reports giving employee numbers or turnover. The best guess is employee numbers have remained somewhere around 5,000 over the past few years. Sony employs around 12,300 people across the European region, around 11% of the global total and the UK represents about 4% of the global total – higher than the average for other large Japanese companies in the European region.

One of the bigger subsidiaries in the UK, Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe has also grown over the past year, by 9% and is now employing 1,539 people, with turnover also rising 15% on 2022. Of the three board members, 1 is Japanese based in Japan and the other two are British, based in the UK. UPDATE – however, Sony Interactive Entertainment have just announced job cuts globally, including Europe (27th February 2024)

4. NTT Data UK

NTT Data UK is by far the largest NTT group company in the UK, with over 1,500 employees, a year on year growth of 27%. Turnover has also grown 25% on the previous year. NTT group companies now employ over 3,500 in the UK, including recent acquisition Sapphire.

NTT has also been consolidated and reorganising its group companies globally. Its integrated annual report does not, however, give regional breakdowns of employee numbers. We estimate there are at least 40,000 people working for NTT group companies in the EMEA region, around 12% of the 338,000 people working for NTT globally. When NTT Data EMEAL (the L is for Latin America) was formed in 2021, it was stated that the region had 38,000 employees.

NTT Data UK’s board has two German members, based in Germany and one Japanese member based in Spain. The CEO is Spanish and the CFO British – both based in the UK. The very European nature of the board is a legacy of the acquisitions of Spanish IT company Everis in 2013.

5. Tokyo Electron Europe

Tokyo Electron is a supplier of equipment to fabricate integrated circuits (IC), flat panel displays (FPD), and photovoltaic cells (PV). It has grown 26% over the past year, now employing 530 people. With the European headquarters in Crawley, it has branches in Israel, Belgium, Italy, Germany, France, Netherlands, Ireland and Austria. Tokyo Electron has over 16,600 employees worldwide and 669 employees in Europe and the Middle East.

It has two Japanese board directors, both based in Japan. The other three board directors are British and American, based in the UK.

*based on the 1007 companies who have filed with Companies House for the year ending 2023.

**with over 500 employees in the UK

Daikin acquires Robert Heath Heating

Daikin Industries has acquired British company Robert Heath Heating, which handles the installation and maintenance of residential heating systems. In Europe, Daikin is focusing on heat pump heating, which has high energy-saving performance. The company will expand its installation and after-sales service network in the UK in anticipation of a growing shift from combustion heating systems that use gas and other sources. Robert Heath employs around 255 (June 2023 – Companies House) to 450 (according to Daikin) people in the UK.

The heat pump market has been rapidly expanding in recent years as countries have provided subsidies against the backdrop of rising awareness of decarbonization and the demand for energy that is not reliant on Russia. Although there was a decline in 2023 compared to the previous year due to falling gas prices and reductions in subsidies, Daikin’s Chairman Inoue Noriyuki said that “this remains a promising market that is expected to grow significantly over the medium to long term.”

One of the other issues for heat pump installation has been a shortage of skilled labour – we wonder whether Daikin hasn’t also acquired Robert Heath as a way of ensuring stable access to engineers who can fit their systems, and also with the intention of using the company to expand and train up the workforce in the UK. Daikin already has around 490 employees in the UK and over 11,000 in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region.

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