Category: Africa

Japanese companies in the UK 7 years on – the new third phase

Executive summary

In the seven years since the Brexit referendum, the benefits of Japanese long term planning for resilience have become clear. Although employment by Japanese companies in the UK has fallen since 2018/9, this is largely in the automotive sector, triggered by the closure of the Honda Swindon plant. Non-automotive manufacturing employment and investment have stayed steady, but there have been no new manufacturing companies coming to the UK.

Employment in the wholesale sector has also fallen, as Japanese companies move their European logistics, warehousing and coordination functions to the EU. There has been significant disinvestment from the UK financial sector, but again employment seems to have held steady.

Germany has almost caught up with the UK as the largest host of Japanese companies in the EU and has overtaken the UK as the largest host of Japanese corporate expatriates.

Now the smoke and fog of Britain’s departure from the EU, and the pandemic have cleared, a new third phase of Japanese investment is taking shape. It is more focused on geopolitical concerns around climate change, energy, defence and security. The UK is seen as an important partner in this, but needs to ensure that it strengthens its long term policy commitments to these sectors, which require large investments and the support of host communities, as well as collaboration and synchronization with the EU, Africa and the Middle East.

Contents

Employment by Japanese companies in the UK grew to 2018/9, then shrank since

Germany has nearly caught up with the UK as a host of Japanese companies

More company closures in the UK than in Germany

A similar number of new Japanese companies opened in the UK and Germany since

UK still the target of Japanese M&A, but on a smaller scale than before

Switzerland overtakes the UK as largest net recipient of Japanese investment in Europe

Manufacturing employment holding steady, apart from the automotive sector 

Net disinvestment in UK financial services sector, although employment remains steady

Germany has overtaken the UK become the largest host to Japanese corporate expatriates in Europe

What does it all mean? An acceleration of trends, new and old

 

Employment by Japanese companies in the UK grew to 2018/9, then shrank since

There were 98,000 people employed by Japan owned companies in the UK, according to the Toyo Keizai[1] database published April 2023, compared to 106,000 in 2015/6.

The Rudlin Consulting database, which includes more companies who have a Japanese owner through acquisition, shows around 160,000 employees for 2021/2, up slightly from 156,000 in 2015/6.

Both sets of data show that employee numbers reached a peak in 2018/9 and have fallen since. This is a different pattern to what has happened in France and Germany, where the employee numbers peaked in 2020/1, but have fallen since. The Netherlands shows somewhat bumpy growth.

Looking at the employment data by sector, it seems the shrinkage in employment in the UK is almost entirely due to the decline in the automotive sector, where around 11,000 jobs have been lost in manufacturing and wholesale.

 

Germany has nearly caught up with the UK as a host of Japanese companies

Toyo Keizai estimates there were 875 Japanese incorporated subsidiaries in the UK in 2015/6 compared to 764 in Germany. By 2022/3 there were 982 Japanese incorporated subsidiaries in the UK, compared to 975 in Germany.

Rudlin Consulting estimates also include branches and more subsidiaries acquired through acquisition than Toyo Keizai. As of June 2023, we estimate there are 1,113 Japan owned organisations in Germany, compared to 1,151 in the UK.

 

More company closures in the UK than in Germany

48 companies closed in Germany since 2018 and 145 closed in the UK since 2017. The biggest sectoral net loss was in wholesale in the UK. A likely explanation is that many companies were dissolved or turned into branches, once they lost their European wholesale coordination functions, with warehousing and logistics focused more on the EU single market.

  • 26 of the UK closures were in the automotive sector
  • 41 were services
  • 39 were wholesale
  • 27 were manufacturing companies
  • 11 were in the IT sector
  • 9 financial
  • 8 logistics
  • 6 chemicals
  • 4 retail
  • 4 food

(some companies in multiple categories).

Many of these closures were due to consolidation and mergers, rather than outright withdrawal from the UK.

A similar number of new Japanese companies opened in the UK and Germany since 2017

64 new companies were established in Germany since 2017, compared to 63 new companies in the UK (of which 4 divested or closed since):

Of the 63 new companies in the UK:

  • 35 were in the services sector
  • 14 in wholesale sector
  • 6 in IT
  • 6 in the financial services sector
  • 3 in manufacturing
  • 3 in energy – storage, renewables, production
  • 1 in logistics (following merger of container businesses of several Japanese companies)
  • 1 in automotive (Highly Marelli, formed from merger with Calsonic Kansei)

(some companies in multiple categories)

UK still the target of Japanese M&A, but on a smaller scale than before

We have tracked 179 companies coming under Japanese ownership in the UK from 2017 to 2023 to date compared to 79 in Germany. These are not exhaustive numbers, and may well reflect a UK bias.

Furthermore, many of the acquisitions were not made directly of British or German companies, but rather of US or other European headquartered companies, which have subsidiaries in the UK or Germany. There may also be recent acquisitions which have not been identified yet.

With those caveats in mind, it does seem to be that majority (123 of the 179 UK acquisitions) were made over the three years from 2017-2019, and since then the rate has been more around 25 companies a year or fewer. There seems to be a similar trend in Germany.

The biggest acquisitions across Europe since 2017 have been:

  • Takeda’s acquisition of Irish pharmaceutical company (London listed) Shire for $64bn in 2019
  • Hitachi’s acquisition of Swiss company ABB’s Power Grids business for $11bn in 2020/2
  • Renesas acquisition of US founded, UK domiciled semiconductor company Dialog in 2021 for $5.9bn
  • Mitsubishi Corporation’s acquisition of Dutch energy company Eneco for $4.4bn
  • Taisho’s acquisition of French pharmaceutical manufacturer UPSA SAS for $1.6n from Bristol-Myers Squibb.
  • Hitachi Rail’s acquisition of Italy’s Ansaldo STS (1.5bn euros) from 2015 to 2019
  • Nidec’s $1.2bn 2017 acquisition of Emerson Electric’s motors, drives and power generation businesses, which included the Welsh drives make Control Techniques and the French motor manufacturer, Leroy-Somer.
  • Toyota Industries’ acquisition of Dutch logistics company Vanderlande for $1.3bn in 2017
  • NEC’s acquisition of Danish IT company KMD in 2018/9 for $1.2bn
  • Fujifilm acquisition of US company Biogen’s Hillerod manufacturing in Denmark for $930m in 2019

In the past, British companies have often been the target of the largest M&A deals, such as SoftBank acquiring ARM, NSG acquiring Pilkington Glass and various acquisitions in the financial services sector. This preference does not seem to have continued, apart from the Renesas/Dialog deal, although there have been smaller scale acquisitions in sectors such as recruitment and staffing, drives, tyres, food and paper wholesale in the UK.

Switzerland overtakes the UK as largest net recipient of Japanese investment in Europe

These big deals have of course had an impact on the flow of investment from Japan into Europe, causing lumpiness in year-to-year totals.

Switzerland received more cumulative net direct investment from Japan since 2017 than the UK, which was the largest recipient of Japanese investment in Europe in the past. The large inflow into Switzerland in 2019 in the wholesale and retail sector was presumably related to Hitachi’s acquisition of the ABB power grids business. The Netherlands was the third largest recipient and Ireland the fourth largest recipient.

The net divestment from the UK in 2020 was in the communications sector and may have been related to SoftBank, as much of their investment activities is located in London. There was also net divestment from the services sector in 2018. There were no major divestments by Japanese companies in terms of selling off subsidiaries in that year, so this might represent movement of assets from UK based subsidiaries to EU based subsidiaries as part of companies such as Sony shifting ownership their intellectual property rights.

In manufacturing, investment in UK electrical machinery, food and chemicals has been greater than the investment in transportation equipment (automotive) and substantially more than in German electrical machinery, food and chemicals manufacturing over the same period.

Cumulative Japanese direct investment totals for Germany and the UK in since 2017 are: [2]

Sector Germany UK
Food manufacturing $0.8bn $9.8bn
Chemicals & pharmaceuticals manufacturing $3.1bn $7.1bn
Electrical machinery manufacturing $0.6bn $7.8bn
Transportation equipment manufacturing $9.3bn $0.8bn
Communications $0.6bn $45.3bn
Wholesale and retail $2bn $3.2bn
Finance and insurance $8.2bn -$2.3bn
Services $1.2bn -$34.5bn

As can be seen below, Ireland has had both inflows and outflows in the chemicals and pharmaceuticals manufacturing sector in 2019 and 2020, presumably related to the Takeda/Shire deal. Denmark had an outflow in 2019, which may have been related to the sale by Takeda of two factories in Denmark to Orifarm.

The data from Japan’s Ministry of Finance needs to be treated with caution, as in many cases (France and financial services sector for example) no data is given, for confidentiality reasons.

Manufacturing employment holding steady, apart from the automotive sector

Disinvestment from the UK in the automotive sector in 2019 and 2021 was presumably related to the closure of Honda’s Swindon plant which was announced in February 2019 and finally shut down in July 2021. 20 or so Japanese automotive suppliers also ceased operations in the UK during this period.

Germany has benefited the most from Japanese investment in the automotive sector – the large inflow in 2019 may be related to Sekisui’s acquisition of Proseat’s European operations – with manufacturing in Germany, Poland and Czech Republic. The UK plant was closed in 2021.

There may have been some second hand investment in the UK automotive sector which is not reflected in the data. Belgium’s status as the second largest recipient of investment is almost certainly due to Toyota having their European headquarters there. Some of that investment may well then have made its way to Toyota’s plants in the UK.

The larger inflow of automotive investment into the UK in 2018 may have been related to Nissan starting production of the Juke at Sunderland in 2019 and then the third generation Qashqai.

Non-automotive manufacturing employment grew to 2019/20 and has held steady since.  Most of the Japanese manufacturers we looked at set up Brexit committees, planned and invested for various scenarios. They must have come to the conclusion that the cost/benefit analyses showed it made more sense to stay put and invest in mitigation measures than to shut down and transfer manufacturing elsewhere.

Net disinvestment in UK financial services sector, although employment remains steady

Although the cumulative investment by Japan into in the UK financial sector was negative from 2017 to 2022, according to Rudlin Consulting data, employment in this sector has held relatively steady. It is hard to be certain of this, as two of the three main Japanese banks are branches of the European headquarters in the Netherlands or the Japanese headquarters, so employee numbers are not disclosed.

Ireland has been a focus for Japanese aircraft leasing and related financing, which may explain why it has benefited most from Japanese financial services sector investment since 2017. For example, in 2020-2022, Japan Investment Adviser subsidiary JP Leasing Services set up a leasing company in Ireland with Airbus, acquiring several aircraft, which may  account for the large investment in 2020.

Germany has overtaken the UK become the largest host to Japanese corporate expatriates in Europe

The general trend in Japanese corporate expatriation across EMEA is downward, and does not seem to have picked up after the pandemic, apart from in the Netherlands and the UAE. The shift of Japanese expatriates (largely based around London) is likely to be an indicator of regional headquarter functions shifting to Germany and the Netherlands, particularly in financial services and trading companies, where the density of Japanese expatriate staff is the highest.

What does it all mean? An acceleration of trends, new and old

I have, over the past seven years, tried to approach the data I gather on Japanese companies in the UK with an open mind. Nonetheless, I admit to having a Big Theory of Brexit (beyond believing it to be an unnecessary waste of time, effort and resources) which is that it accelerates trends which were already there.

So the question I wanted to answer, in looking at the data this time, was what trends were showing through, new and old.

In my history of Mitsubishi Corporation in London, examining how its business developed from 1915,[3] it became apparent that the organization had quite quickly moved from an importer/exporter trading model to a regional coordinator. It was following a well-known model of globalization in business to move from pure export to manufacturing locally and then to some kind of transnational model, with regional centers of excellence.

Japanese trading companies like Mitsubishi Corporation do not directly manufacture, but often invest in manufacturing, as Mitsubishi Corporation did, in acquiring Princes Foods in the UK in 1989. Primarily though, they are in London because they see it as an important global and regional hub, a good training ground for their rising stars to gather information and influence global policy making.

Just after Brexit became a reality, I remember attending a large gathering of senior executives of Japanese companies in the UK. The then head of Mitsubishi Corporation in Europe, Middle East and Africa spoke, making it clear that while he thought Brexit was a negative for Japanese business, the company would not be leaving the UK.

Having worked at Mitsubishi Corporation myself, including in planning and coordination, I instinctively understood this to be about the strategic value that a presence in the UK had for Mitsubishi Corporation, and other zaikai[4] Japanese companies.  Nonetheless I worried that the UK’s strategic value to Japanese companies would diminish by no longer having as much influence in the EU once it was on the outside.

The only Japanese trading company to have left the UK since 2017 is Sojitz, which is not one of the top five of Mitsubishi Corporation, Mitsui, Sumitomo Corporation, Itochu and Marubeni. It has clearly decided to focus on chemicals trading, and to put that headquarters in Germany, which has traditionally been seen by Japanese companies as the regional leader in chemicals manufacturing.

Other regional headquarters to have left the UK were part of the earliest phase of globalization – the wholesalers who were importing from Japan. They have moved their regional coordination, warehousing and logistics hubs to the EU – which is why there has been significant growth in employee numbers and expatriate Japanese numbers in the Netherlands. At the same time, the overall drop in the number of Japanese expatriates across the region may well be due to how localized many of the wholesale operations have become in terms of senior management.

The second phase companies – those who opened manufacturing operations in the UK – have also shifted further out of the UK, and taken their supply chains with them. Consumer electronics manufacturing left some time ago, and the main concern had been for the automotive sector. As the analysis above shows, Germany has had by far the greater share of automotive investment in Europe since 2017, although this may be a one off, due to an acquisition. Some of the investment into Belgium may feed through to the UK via Toyota, however, and both Toyota and Nissan have not shown any signs of leaving the UK yet.

The third phase, of having regional coordination and centres of excellence, is showing through more strongly now for the UK. Now that the regional coordination which was more to do with supply chains for manufacturers, or logistics and warehousing for importing from Japan has shifted away from the UK, the UK is left with the geopolitically minded, strategic investors, in energy, transportation and telecommunications infrastructure, defence and R&D in biotech and pharmaceuticals and semiconductors.

These investors are not so influenced by the search for growth overseas which characterized Japanese acquisitions in the UK and elsewhere during the lost three decades of the 1990s to the 2010s. They are driven by geopolitical concerns regarding climate change and reducing dependence on hostile states in sectors such as telecommunications, energy and digital data.

Despite the current British government’s taboo on mentioning industrial policy, it is clear that many British politicians are aware of this new phase and realise that the UK’s concerns align with Japan’s. There has been an embarrassment of former and current prime ministers and ministers at recent UK-Japan events in London. The exhibition stands at the one I attended, as a non-executive director of a Japanese soft-power initiative, Japan House London, were almost exclusively focused on renewable energy.

The recent announcement[5] by the Japanese government that they will harmonise Japanese standards for domestically produced defence equipment with US and European standards, to reduce maintenance costs and increase business opportunities for Japanese defence companies is very much in line with this new third phase. The UK, Italy and Japan have merged their fighter jet programmes and are aiming to develop a next generation fighter jet demonstrator by 2027.

It is not going to be entirely smooth – Japanese trading companies have shown no inclination to disinvest from Russian LNG projects, for example. This will have been the subject of discussions with the Japanese government in terms of impact on Japanese dependency on foreign energy supplies – the Sakhalin 2 project, for example, supplies around 9%  of Japan’s LNG imports.[6]

In terms of “making Brexit work” – for phase 1 and 2 companies, this ship has sailed as far as traditional import export, manufacturing related trade is concerned. They made all the contingency plans and moved what needed to moved a long time ago. There have been no new Japanese manufacturers setting up in Britain, and it is unlikely this will happen until the UK joins the single market again.

For phase 3, making Brexit work will be more to do with ensuring that cooperation and synchronisation with the rest of Europe and the UK’s positive influence inside and outside Europe is as strong as possible in the strategic areas of energy, defence, telecommunications and transportation infrastructure and R&D. This will not have the positive populist impact of phase 2 manufacturing projects, which bring thousands of jobs and supply chains in their wake. In fact the impact electorally could be negative, as we have seen with nuclear power, wind farms and high speed rail – there is antagonism towards the disruption to the countryside they cause and the massive investments they require. This is a problem familiar to Japanese companies in their home country too.

Furthermore, this collaboration is not just about Europe, it needs to bring in the neighbouring continents of Africa and the Middle East. Obviously climate change has to be tackled globally, it cannot be “environmentalism in one country”. Successive Japanese governments have worried about Japan’s energy poverty for decades and this has driven much of the investment, particularly by Japanese trading companies, in overseas energy projects. Trading companies have invested in Africa and the Middle East, often through their regional headquarters in the UK, in renewable energy projects ranging from hydroelectric power generation to solar home systems.

Japanese companies like working with other Japanese companies, so once a beachhead of investment is established, others in the supply chain and support system will follow – as the UK saw with Japanese car companies in the 1970s and the 1980s. That ecosystem is still strong in the UK and many of the components suppliers can also supply the energy and infrastructure sectors.

This new third phase of Japanese investment in and via the UK is not going to be attracted by the UK government giving grants to build or re-equip factories, but by it showing a willingness to invest for results which will only be seen in the long term, and to put political energy into building sustainable government policies and community support.

A pdf of this report can be downloaded here

Our latest 2023 directories of Japanese companies in the UK are available here.

[1] https://biz.toyokeizai.net/en/data/service/detail/id=860&academic=1

[2] https://www.mof.go.jp/english/policy/international_policy/reference/balance_of_payments/ebpfdii.htm

[3] The History of Mitsubishi Corporation in London: 1915 to Present Day Routledge Advances in Asia-Pacific Business, 2000 https://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Mitsubishi-Corporation-London-Asia-Pacific/dp/0415228727

[4] Zaikai means the Japanese business and finance community, particularly those companies with power and influence and connections to the political sphere, which are seen as representing Japan in the world.

[5] https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Aerospace-Defense-Industries/Japan-to-standardize-arms-with-U.S.-Europe-for-joint-maintenance accessed 22 June 2023

[6] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/japans-mitsui-says-no-plans-exit-russias-sakhalin-2-lng-project-2023-06-21/

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UK employment by Japanese automotive companies has fallen 25% over 4 years

The statement by Stellantis that it may be forced to shut some of its UK operations if the current local content rules in the Brexit deal continue prompted me to take a look at the current situation for Japanese car companies in the UK.

As The Economist pointed out recently, Japanese car companies are behind in the race to produce electric vehicles – partly due to being victims of their own successes with hybrid vehicles. But there are signs of change with the new president of Toyota‘s announcement of new EV models and Honda‘s electric vehicle joint venture with Sony. Nissan has been focused on electric vehicles from the start but somewhat distracted with wrangles with Renault post-Ghosn.

Despite being laggards, Japanese car companies are still very important to the UK economy. Nissan is the largest UK manufacturer of cars and Toyota the third largest. Announcements are expected by Toyota and Nissan soon on what they are going to do with replacement models for their Corolla and Juke respectively, both currently manufactured in the UK, but I have not seen any leaks yet in the Japanese media on what the plans might be for this. As the spokespeople quoted in The Economist say, it would be helpful to longer term planning if the UK could be seen as a stable partner, and had an industrial policy – or at least acknowledge that not having an industrial policy is in its own way an industrial policy.

The danger is that Japanese car companies and their suppliers just dwindle away in the UK

Without longer term plans in place, the danger is that Japanese car companies and their suppliers just dwindle away in the UK. The latest data I have compiled shows that employment in the UK by Japanese automotive companies has fallen 25% from 2017/8 to 2021/2 from 43,000 to 32,000. These figures exclude what could be a further 7,500 employees, working for companies which have not yet submitted their UK annual reports for FY2021/2 – Itochu’s subsidiaries Kwik-Fit, Stapleton’s Tyre Services and European Tyre Enterprises, GS Yuasa battery sales and manufacturing, Hitachi Astemo and Highly Marelli.

Around 4,000 of the jobs lost were from Honda‘s Swindon closure. The remaining 7,000 missing jobs can partly be explained by the closure of other automotive companies:

  1. Akebono (closed 2021)
  2. Alps Alpine (2021)
  3. Calsonic Kansei Sunderland (2020)
  4. CCI Corporation (2020)
  5. Futaba Industrial UK (2019)
  6. Hi-Lex Cable System (2021)
  7. Honda Trading Europe (2022)
  8. Johnan UK (2021)
  9. Kansai Paint Europe (2020)
  10. Keihin Europe (2021)
  11. MC Ionic Solutions (2021)
  12. Mitsuba Europe (2023)
  13. Nichias Europe (2020)
  14. Nichirin UK (2022)
  15. Proseat (2021)
  16. Senju Manufacturing Europe (2019)
  17. Showa UK (2022)
  18. The Colt Car Co (2022)
  19. TMD Friction (2023)
  20. Toyo Denso UK (2023)
  21. Toyoda Gosei (2023)
  22. TS Tech UK (2021)
  23. TT Assembly Systems UK (2021)
  24. UYS (2022)
  25. Yokowo Europe (2023)

Not all of these were complete closures – some were as the result of a consolidation of subsidiaries.

Toyota Motor Manufacturing UK’s employment levels have stayed relatively stable over the past 4 years at around 2,700. Nissan Motor Manufacturing of the UK’s total employment numbers have dropped by 20% or 1,600 however, from 7,933 in 2017/8 to 6,335 in 2022/3.

If we just focus on Japanese companies with production in the UK, there was a 26% decline in employment over 2018-2022 – unsurprisingly close to the overall trend – as around 74% of all Japanese automotive employees in the UK are employed in manufacturing operations.

Unpicking what is happening overall with Japanese automotive companies in Europe is for another day. What has been on our radar recently is how many Japanese automotive companies such as Toyota group (which includes Suzuki and Isuzu), Nissan and Honda are showing more interest in manufacturing combustion engine models in Africa, particularly Ghana, for CKD, lightweight models and SUVs.

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Japan and Morocco

According to the Moroccan government, Japan is the largest foreign private employer in Morocco, with 75 Japan owned organisations generating more than 50,000 jobs. These numbers look likely to grow further in the coming years, as in April 2022 the agreements between Japan and Morocco on the promotion and protection of investments and elimination of double taxation came into force.

The lack of such agreements has meant that up until now many Japanese companies’ presence in Morocco had been as branches of their French, Spanish or German subsidiaries. The largest employers are manufacturers, mostly in the automotive sector, with around 30,000 employed by Sumitomo Electric Industries and Yazaki. Sumitomo Electric Industries has 8 plants in Morocco, and is set to increase this as it diverts production from Ukraine.  Yazaki is planning to invest Y9bn to increase its output in Morocco by 25%, including a new production facility. Fujikura is about to start its plant there, also shifting production from Ukraine.

Renault and Stellantis (Peugeot) have assembly plants in Morocco, contributing to Morocco becoming the biggest exporter of passenger cars in Africa, 80% of which are sold to Europe – primarily France, Spain, Germany and Italy – supported by the free trade agreement with the European Union.

The Moroccan government has been very insistent on local sourcing but also supportive of foreign companies operating there in terms of incentives and taxation. It has also invested in infrastructure such as a high-speed rail link between Casablanca and Tangier, where Renault’s plant is located.  Labour costs in Morocco are about a quarter of those in Spain and lower than in Eastern Europe too.

It is not just the automotive sector that is growing in Morocco, however. NTT Data has recently committed to investing around Y200m, creating 1,000 jobs, after a memorandum of understanding was signed between the telecommunications ministries of Japan and Morocco. The Moroccan government is also keen to increase inward investment in its aerospace and renewable energy sectors.

The King of Morocco introduced democratic reforms after the Arab Spring of 2011, since which a moderate Islamist government has been in power. The Islamist party comprehensively lost in the elections in 2021, however. The new government, led by the RNI party, contains influential members of the Moroccan business community. Human rights and freedom of expression are still a concern, with journalists being imprisoned recently in a crackdown.

From a Japanese business perspective, there is definitely a mood of optimism, as can be seen in the recent JETRO Africa report (link to pdf), where 65% of the Japanese companies in Morocco who responded to their survey expected to expand their operations there.* The size of the market, growth potential and the stable social and political situation all scored highly compared to other African countries.  Morocco also scored better than other African countries on infrastructure and the ease of hiring and retaining employees. Morocco is more French speaking than English speaking, however, which may account for the relatively low number of Japanese expatriates based there.

*since this was written, a new JETRO report has come out, which the article above now links to, which showed that there had been a drop in the number of Japanese companies expecting to expand in Morocco, to 54.5% – on the other hand, Morocco was one of the top African countries for current and future profitability.

This article by Pernille Rudlin first appeared in the Teikoku Databank News in June 2022

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Some thoughts for Japanese companies investing in Egypt

There were several participants from Egypt in an online training session I ran recently for a Japanese automotive company. It is one of the few positive outcomes of the pandemic, that putting training online means it can now be accessed by people who would normally not be able to travel to the regional headquarters in Western Europe to participate in classroom-based training.  Technology problems still remain, however. One of the Egyptian participants was a senior manager with many insights to share, but the audio connection was too poor quality to hear what he had to say.

It was unsurprising, therefore, to see that a strong infrastructure was not one of the key attractions for investing in Egypt, according to a recent JETRO survey of Japanese companies who have operations in Africa. Where Egypt did score highly was on the size of its market and growth potential. It has a population of over 100 million, making it the largest Arab country in the world and the third largest country in Africa.

Respondents to the survey also rated Egypt relatively highly on political stability. Since Abdel Gattah al-Sisi, the current President, ousted Mohamed Morsi in 2013, the situation has improved, with the ending of a nationwide state of emergency in 2021, but it is still has military rule, with various human rights concerns. Other Arab states have been supporting Egypt’s economy since Morsi was ousted. They were previously opposed to Morsi, because of his membership of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s roots stretch back to before WWII, when it was founded in Egypt as a pan-Islamic, religious, political and social movement. It was opposed to the British rule in Egypt, an occupation dating back to the 19th century. As a consequence of the occupation, English is widely spoken in Egypt, particularly among the management cadre.

However, as I know from my own family history, Egypt should not be viewed too complacently as an attractive investment destination. My grandfather was posted to Cairo in the 1950s, when he worked for Scandinavian Airlines. After a couple of years there, living a luxurious life with servants and a cook, he found himself having to organise the rescue of his fellow European expatriates, because of the Suez Crisis. This had been preceded by terrorist acts by the Muslim Brotherhood against buildings frequented by the British and other foreigners.

In more recent years, the continuing regular terrorist attacks on foreigners have impacted tourism and the sector has now been hit by the loss of Russian and Ukrainian visitors who were an important source of income. Russia and Ukraine also account for over a quarter of global wheat exports and around 80% of the world’s supply of sunflower oil, so the prices of wheat and cooking oil have rocketed up. This is impacting Egypt badly, as it is the world’s biggest wheat importer, with a subsidised bread programme for two thirds of its population. The intertwined histories of countries in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region continue to evolve.

This article was originally published in Japanese in the Teikoku Databank News on 11th May 2022

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UK no longer the biggest host of Japanese automotive manufacturing in Europe – and the rise of Africa

For many years the UK was host to the largest number of Japanese automotive manufacturers and their employees in Europe. This was thanks to Toyota, Nissan and Honda all having factories there.  which in turn attracted a large number of automotive suppliers to set up plants near by.

Last year (2020-1) Poland took over the number one spot from the UK in terms of numbers of Japanese automotive manufacturing employees in the EMEA region. According to our estimates, the UK will slip to 6th position in 2021-2022, due to the closure of Honda‘s Swindon plant, along with many of its suppliers shutting down operations. It will be overtaken by Czech Republic, Germany, Turkey and Morocco.

There has been strong growth in employee numbers in Africa in particular – mainly in Morocco, South Africa and Egypt. This looks set to continue as labour intensive wire harness manufacturers diversify production away from Ukraine and other Eastern European countries.  South Africa has also seen more investment from Nissan and Toyota in their plants there over the past few years. Isuzu also has a plant in South Africa, in addition to manufacturing in Russia and Turkey.

Nissan’s other plants in the EMEA region, apart from the UK and South Africa are in Russia and Spain (the Avila and Cantabria plants continue to operate, after the closure of plants in Catalonia) and Egypt.  It has just opened a vehicle assembly plant under licence to Japan Motors, in Ghana.

Suzuki has plants in Hungary and Egypt and Toyota now fully owns the factory it used to joint own with PSA in Czech Republic, in addition to its plants in the UK, France, Turkey, Russia and Portugal as well as engine and transmission factories in the UK and Poland.

Although Poland does not have any Japanese OEM car manufacturers based in it, it still tops our ranking in terms of employment, not just because of the Toyota engine plant, but also the other Japan owned automotive suppliers with labour intensive manufacturing there, such as Bridgestone, NGK, Pilkington,  NSK, Sumiriko and the wire harness manufacturers. Similarly, Germany is not host to any Japanese automotive OEMs, but is host to many mid sized Japanese automotive and other industrial component manufacturers.

In terms of actual numbers of Japan owned automotive manufacturers, we estimate the UK is still top of the table with 67, despite the closure of 11 such operations in the past few years.  Toyo Keizai’s database has Germany and the UK neck and neck, with around 31 or 32 “transportation equipment” manufacturers – a category which excludes automotive suppliers who manufacture components such as tyres. In Germany‘s case, many of these manufacturers do not just supply the automotive industry, and it has been a trend for some UK based manufacturers too, trying to diversify away from overreliance on core Japanese automotive customers.

This difficulty in categorizing industrial suppliers has caused some glitches in Toyo Keizai’s numbers, it would seem, but overall, the trend over the past five or so years is clear – the numbers of Japanese manufacturers hosted by Germany, Italy, Czech Republic and France have grown over the past few years, but that growth seems to have tailed off. Host countries with fewer Japanese automotive manufacturers than five years ago according to Toyo Keizai are Russia, the UK and Belgium.  South Africa, with 16 Japanese automotive manufacturers by our estimates, and 8 by Toyo Keizai’s, is not showing many signs of growth in the numbers of Japanese companies it hosts – yet.

 

 

One further clue to the future of Japanese automotive manufacturing in the region can be found from the foreign direct investment data published by Japan’s Ministry of Finance. The cumulative investment over the past five years is summed up in the chart to the left. Clearly there has been some disinvestment from the UK and Belgium recently and a large investment  in Germany in 2019. There have been no major M&As to cause this, the investment is more likely to be the Japan headquarters of major manufacturers transferring capital to their regional headquarters (Toyota in Belgium, Sumitomo Electric Bordnetze and Yazaki in Germany and Denso in the Netherlands) for further onward investment in the region.  For the UK, the disinvestment is likely to be Honda and its suppliers, and the investment would be from Nissan and its suppliers.

A directory of 205 Japan owned companies with production facilities in the UK, giving their full names, parent company, type of business and latest number of employees is available for £20 + VAT. Please contact us for an invoice and payment details via PayPal.

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Top 30 Japanese employers in Europe, Middle East, Africa 2021

The major Japanese employers in Europe, Middle East and Africa employ over 540,000 people, a 1.4%* rise comparing financial year 2018/9 to 2019/20, even though their global employee numbers have shrunk by around 1% over the same period. As in previous years, acquisitions of companies in the region are the main growth drivers.

The top 5 largest employers remain the same – Sumitomo Electric Industries, Yazaki, NTT Data, Fujitsu and Canon.  The rest of the top 10 are the same, apart from Hitachi rising from 14 to 9, bumping Toyota Tsusho to number 11.

Exiting the Top 30 are Mitsubishi Corporation, Mitsubishi Electric and Olympus – not so much due to any decline as the growth of the new entrants LIXIL (following its acquisition of Grohe), NEC (acquiring KMD in Denmark and Northgate in UK) and Asahi (having acquired various European beer brands such as Peroni, Fullers and Grolsch).

Which company to work for

We have previously recommended that people wanting to work for a Japanese company should consider not just whether it is growing in the region but also what proportion of its employees are in the region. The greater the proportion, the more influence the region is likely to have in headquarters’ decisions.

The average for proportion of employees in the EMEA region of the top 30 is around 14%. Those with more than a quarter of their global employees in EMEA are NSG (due to its acquisition of Pilkington), Asahi Group (due to the acquisition of the beer brands mentioned above), Asahi Glass (the continuing influence of the 1981 Glaverbel acquisition), Sumitomo Electric Industries (the continuing influence of acquiring Volkswagen Bordnetze in 2006), Toyota Tsusho (acquired French company – mainly operating in Africa – CFAO in 2012).

The companies who score highly both in terms of growth and proportion of employees in the region are Sumitomo Electric Industries, Toyota Tsusho and NTT Data. The latter grew through acquisitions of Dimension Data, Keane and Itelligence but appears to have shrunk its EMEA employees over the 2018/9 to 2019/20 period. This is actually due to Latin America being excluded from the regional total in 2019/20, having been previously included.  Dentsu also has nearly a quarter of its employees in EMEA and has grown nearly 50% since 2014/5 due to the acquisition of Aegis Network and subsequent smaller acquisitions, but the numbers are starting to decline as it starts to consolidate and restructure, aiming to cut its overseas roles by 12.5%.

Dentsu does not publish consolidated regional employee numbers, and neither do trading companies such as Mitsubishi Corporation, Toyota Tsusho and Itochu.  Some have been inconsistent in publishing details – JT International for example – so we have had to use our best guesses and our own database. Overall the level of transparency in Japanese companies’ reporting on overseas employees has improved tremendously over the six years we have been tracking them, thanks to Japanese companies’ enthusiastic adoption of UN Sustainable Development Goals.  Perhaps a lack of transparency on employee details should be a factor to consider in terms of desirability as an employer.

If you’re thinking of working for a Japanese company, a good way to signal that you know what you’re letting yourself in for would be to obtain the certificates from doing the e-learning modules on working in a Japanese company from the leading global Japan focused intercultural training company, Japan Intercultural Consulting.

*If NTT Data is excluded, as the 2018/9 employee numbers for the EMEA region in their annual report included Latin America, but Latin America was not included in the 2019/20 regional employee numbers.  Including NTT Data in 2019/20 figures produces a small decline in the regional employee total for the Top 30  of -0.24%.

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Brexit rebalancing for Japan’s automotive companies

Record UK car production for 2016 was reflected in the 2% increase in employment by the largest Japanese automotive companies in the UK on the previous year. The fall investment in the UK automotive sector from £2.5bn to £1.66bn tells the other side of the story, which is that employment growth for Europe and Africa overall for those companies was greater than in the UK – at 7% – the main contributor being Yazaki opening plants in Morocco and Bulgaria.

As Mike Hawes of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders puts it “Any imposition of tariffs is “an absolute red line for the industry” that would throw the future of some plants into doubt. “It would be very hard to overcome that level of additional cost, given plants operate on pretty wafer-thin margins.” Factories would not close overnight, he added, “but the potential is for death by a thousand cuts” as the manufacture of new models was moved abroad. “If you produce three or four models and you lose one, then inherently your competitiveness is affected.”

The Japanese automotive sector account for 7 of our Top 30 Japanese employers in the UK (if you count Pilkington, which manufactures a mix  of automotive and construction glass).  Globally these seven companies (Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Calsonic Kansei, NSG Pilkington, Denso, Yazaki) employ over a million people, around 10% of which are in the Europe and Africa region and around 2% (23,000) in the UK.

According to our analysis of last year, a rebalancing may well already be under way.  It looks like Nissan and its suppliers (Calsonic Kansei and Yazaki) had a good year in 2016 in terms of employment and production levels –  but Calsonic Kansei has made investments in plants in Spain and Russia over the past couple of years, where Nissan has other factories. Toyota and its supplier Denso reduced their employment levels in the UK in 2016 – in line with the decrease in production at Toyota.  The big growth story in Europe & Africa in terms of employment and investment was Yazaki, who added 150 employees to its design and sales operations in the UK, but this was dwarfed by the additional 10,000 employees in the region generated by opening plants in Morocco and Bulgaria.

Honda, Calsonic Kansei and NSG have their regional headquarters in the UK.  Honda‘s UK employment and production levels grew  (whereas employment shrank in the region overall) and they have publicly declared that their UK factory will be a global supply hub (80% of its production is exported to the EU). However, relative to the to the other 6 companies they have a smaller presence in the Europe & Africa region – the only other production facility being a factory in Turkey – which at least has the advantage of being in a customs union with the EU.

Japanese companies in the UK

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Not just Toyota – the Brexit rebalancing has already started

Toyota‘s warnings at Davos that it was having to consider how to survive in the UK after Brexit were preceded by a very under-the-radar announcement that it would be making some redundancies at its Burnaston plant.  It is a sign of what is to come for Japanese companies in the UK and our research (see below) shows that a rebalancing is already being undertaken by many.  Whereas Japanese companies increased their employment across Europe, Middle East & Africa by nearly 10% from 2015 to 2016, UK employment levels remained unchanged.*

Toyota said that a reduction was necessary as the initial burst of production needed for new models introduced in 2015 is now stabilising.  Indeed, Toyota’s total workforce in the UK had already fallen by 3.6% in 2015/6 and by 9% across Europe.

Now it is clear that the UK really will leave the Single Market and the Customs Union, where there are long term trends in place already, such as automation or phasing in and out of models, Brexit will provide the impetus to rebalance resources across Europe and beyond, to maintain integration in the Single Market or ease of serving other growth markets if Europe disintegrates further and/or growth slows.  Hardline Brexiters, Trump and Putin may welcome the disintegration of regional arrangements, but multinationals are moving in the opposite direction, integrating their operations regionally and globally both in terms of supply chains and people.

Fujitsu already made similar move in announcing 1800 redundancies in the UK in October 2016 – part of 3300 job losses across Europe.  It stated it was not related to the Brexit referendum result, but part of a longer term transformation programme – mainly to do with moving more of its IT services support to lower cost bases.

Our latest compilation of the Top 30 Japanese companies in Europe and the UK – now most annual reports for year ending March 2016 have been published –  shows that this process had indeed started before the referendum.  Fujitsu has reduced its workforce in the region it calls EMEIA (Europe, Middle East, India and Africa) by 3% from 2015/2016 and in the UK (in which it was possibly overweight anyway, thanks to the legacy of having acquired ICL) by far more – 15%.

Fujitsu is still the biggest Japanese employer in the UK, with over 10,000 employees, but if it dips much below 8000 as a result of the latest round of redundancies, then Nissan, currently with 7,657 employees, might well overtake it.  Nissan’s UK workforce grew 2.9% in 2015/6 and actually shrank across Europe by 2% in the same period.  Calsonic Kansei, one of Nissan’s key suppliers, also grew its workforce by 10% in the UK to 1,729.  Presumably this will hold until the new Nissan models will come online in 2019 giving a year or two of high production and sales, until, well, see Toyota above.  As previously posted, car manufacturers operate on the basis that a factory needs to serve a market of at least 100 million consumers in order to be sustainable.  The EU qualifies, as does Russia – but the UK on its own does not.

Other big increases in the UK workforce were due to acquisitions – Mitsui Sumitomo & Aioi Nissay Dowa group acquiring Lloyds underwriters Amlin and Insure The Box, Softbank acquiring ARM  and Dentsu Aegis acquiring various agencies in Europe and the US, absorbing their UK workforce with it. Organic growth highlights were Hitachi (18.8% up) – building on its Hitachi Rail acquisitions – soon to be employing 900 at its Newton Aycliffe plant, Ricoh (up 11% in the UK but only 1% in Europe) and Fast Retailing, expanding their Uniqlo and Comptoir des Cotonniers retail business, with 1100 employees, up from 700 the previous year.

However Hitachi expanded 70% across Europe, presumably due to the acquisition of Ansaldo rail businesses in Italy and NTT Data also expanded across Europe by 20% to 18,000 employees  (NTT Data’s UK workforce is surprisingly small compared to Fujitsu, at around 450 as of 2015). Automotive supplier Yazaki grew by almost a quarter, to reach 45,200 – a large part of this being its manufacturing in Eastern Europe and North Africa – similar locations to the largest Japanese employer in Europe, Sumitomo Electric Wiring, whose workforce shrank slightly to 56,273.

What next for the UK and Japanese companies in Europe?

I would give up any hope of expanding automotive manufacturing in the UK.  As outlined above, the shift eastwards in Europe, to Turkey and also to north Africa has already taken place.  Which would seem to negate the need for suppliers to be in the Single Market, but note that the EU already has free trade deals with Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria and Turkey is in a customs union with the EU.  Yazaki (headquartered in Germany) and Sumitomo Electric Wiring (tripartite headquarters across Italy, UK and Germany) used to have manufacturing in the UK but are now largely focused on pre-sales engineering.  Calsonic Kansei still has manufacturing in the UK, but has recently invested in plants in Spain and Russia where – not at all coincidentally – Nissan has factories.

The UK still has strength in the design side of the automotive engineering, and I wonder whether the UK government deal with Nissan didn’t have some kind of grant or tax break for supporting this, to cushion the blow to the manufacturing side from any tariffs.  Although Nissan’s European headquarters are in Switzerland, there is a large design centre in the UK.  Similarly Honda has an R&D operation as well as a Formula 1 engine team based in the UK.

80% of the UK economy is services, and we are a net exporter of services.  Delivery of services requires you to be close to the customer.  So what the UK needs to ensure is that the customers with the biggest budgets – the regional headquarters of multinationals, Japanese or otherwise – stay in the UK.   Our professional services – not just finance but R&D, design, IT, consulting, accounting, legal, marketing – all thrive because they are supporting these regional headquarters. Lower taxes and deregulation might keep some headquarters happy, but ultimately they have to worry about their proximity to customers too.  By leaving the European Union, the UK will be perceived as less close to EU customers (and also the regulatory environment).  We have to hope that the positive, proactive “global” UK that Theresa May outlined in her recent speech really does come together, and deals are quickly negotiated with African and Middle Eastern countries, so that the UK can position itself as the EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa) regional headquarters of choice.

The UK is currently the regional base for over half of the top 30 Japanese companies in Europe or EMEA.  Keeping it that way will also, as the Japanese government itself pointed out, need a free movement of people in the region and a liberal immigration policy.  If this becomes an issue, which it already has of course, the other trend I have highlighted elsewhere, of an increasingly virtual structure, where regional management and functions are scattered around a region, will intensify and will be increasingly difficult to service from one location, particularly if that location is not part of the Single Market or immigration has become a sticking point in free trade agreements.

If this happens, then UK services companies are going to have to open more offices across the EMEA region and relocate their personnel accordingly – as various banks have already announced.

(*Percentages calculated only for those companies where annual report figures for the EMEA or Europe region and the UK were available.)

Reports, profiles and other research on the Top 30 largest Japanese companies in Europe, Middle East and Africa are available from Rudlin Consulting  – please contact pernilledotrudlinatrudlinconsultingdotcom for further details.

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Brexit business opportunities for Japanese companies

A couple of Japanese expatriate business people with whom I was having lunch with recently both remarked how surprised they were that their British colleagues were quick to recover from the Brexit shock and think positively about the business opportunities it might bring.  I too have been trying to be positive and have been doing some further research into how Japanese companies are evolving in the UK. The opportunities I have identified for Japanese companies in the UK are:

1. Africa and the Middle East

The UK has historic ties to Africa and the Middle East, which means that is still a good base for coordinating activities across those regions as there are many expatriates from and experts in those regions, who live in the UK, and are sources of information and management capability.

The UK government is going to be looking to boost trade to non-EU countries, as a counterbalance to any negative impact from Brexit on trade with the EU, so there is likely to be plenty of support for developing business with these regions.

It might even be easier than before to hire people from those regions in the UK. Although a vote for Brexit was partly to stop immigration to the UK, this was very much about preventing lower skilled people from Eastern Europe living in the UK. Most Japanese companies were not hiring such people in the first place, so I doubt any restrictions on this kind of immigration will have much impact.

Japanese financial services companies are already changing the status of non-UK branches to a European Union branch or incorporated subsidiary, and are strengthening their African operations, but it looks like those operations will still be reporting into the London office, which will act as an EMEA coordination function.

Japanese manufacturers have already shifted lower skilled, labour intensive production eastwards in Europe or to Africa and I assume Brexit will accelerate this trend, with the UK being a regional hub for engineering design and development expertise

2. Infrastructure

Despite the fact that manufacturing has moved eastwards or south to Africa, the British government is well aware that British people desperately want well paid, secure manual worker jobs to return to the UK. The most obvious way to do this is through public sector investment in transportation and energy.   Hitachi and other such infrastructure companies should still find plenty of business, although it is not clear what will happen to EU funding for energy and transport infrastructure projects.

3. Acquisitions in the UK

As Softbank’s acquisition of ARM proved, there are still companies in the UK which are attractive acquisition targets, not as a gateway to the Single Market but because they are unique in terms of their brand, technology or expertise. For example, food and drink brands unique to the UK, Lloyds underwriters and UK advertising agencies have all recently been acquired by Japanese companies.  It seems likely the weak pound and strong yen will continue for a while, so there may be some bargains for the brave.

This article originally appeared in Japanese in the Teikoku Databank News on 14th September 2016 and is also published in Pernille Rudlin’s new book  “Shinrai: Japanese Corporate Integrity in a Disintegrating Europe”  – available as a paperback and Kindle ebook on  Amazon.

For more content like this, subscribe to the free Rudlin Consulting Newsletter. 最新の在欧日系企業の状況については無料の月刊Rudlin Consulting ニューズレターにご登録ください。

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Japan – into Africa

Many Japanese companies have set up European regional headquarters, largely in the UK, Germany or the Netherlands and use this as a base for consolidating their administrative activities across the region.  Increasingly these days the designated region covered is not just Europe, but EMEA – Europe, Middle East and Africa.  The historical ties that the UK in particular has with Africa and the Middle East, means that it is not only easy to access the Middle East and Africa from London, but also that it is relatively easy to get hold of information about countries in those regions in the UK as there are many expatriates and experts on those countries based in the UK.

One such expert is Professor Sir Paul Collier, a professor of economics at Oxford University, whose speech to a group of Japanese businesspeople in London I attended a while back. Sir Paul had met Shinzo Abe at a G8 meeting, and his speech was largely in support of the recent initiatives by Abe and Japanese businesses to become more involved in Africa, recently reinforced by the TICAD meeting in Nairobi.

He is realistic, however, saying that “I am not going to tell you Africa is wonderful.  Africa is complicated and has a small economy, but it has got significant opportunities.”  The opportunities fall into four main areas – natural resources, the infrastructure needed to exploit those resources, growth in sectors such as electric power, construction, consumer goods and the “e-economy” such as payments by mobile phone.

He also pointed to the specific attractions that Africa would have for Japan.  Firstly that as African growth is very commodity price dependent, and Japan is a big commodity importer, having investments in Africa is a useful “hedge” against commodity price movements.  Secondly, Japan is apparently welcome in Africa.  “Africa is tired of Europe and doesn’t like being told what to do”.  The USA behaves like a colonial power but does not have any money to invest into Africa.  China was hugely popular in Africa 10 years ago, but apparently many African leaders are now feeling frightened of becoming too dependent on China and are trying to push back on deals.

The biggest negative for Japan, in Sir Paul’s opinion, is that culturally, “Africa is Japan upside down.  Japanese society is one of very high trust and very high social cohesion, and Africa isn’t”.   And of course, Africa isn’t one country but 54 countries and the levels of opportunities and risk vary considerably from one country to another.  Sir Paul’s recommendations were to focus on Lagos and Nairobi, with possibly a sub office in Rwanda.  With regard to corruption, the risk is reputational rather than financial, and he recommends having a policy and making it very clear to counterparts what that policy is.

He also reinforced the view that approaching Africa from the UK was a good tactic.  “The UK, public and private sectors, have the knowledge, network and the contacts but not the products that Africa wants.”  Japan has those products, so, teaming up with the British should bring plenty of mutual benefit.

This article originally appeared in Japanese in the Teikoku Databank News on 14th May 2014 and also appears in Pernille Rudlin’s new book  “Shinrai: Japanese Corporate Integrity in a Disintegrating Europe” – available as a paperback and Kindle ebook on  Amazon.

For more content like this, subscribe to the free Rudlin Consulting Newsletter. 最新の在欧日系企業の状況については無料の月刊Rudlin Consulting ニューズレターにご登録ください。

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