Brexit

Japanese shift to Germany continues

Germany has historically been the main rival to the UK in Europe for Japanese investment. The UK absorbs about 40% of total Japanese investment into the EU but according to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there are actually 50% more Japan originated companies (703) in Germany compared to the UK (471).*

The reason for this discrepancy in numbers may be to do with the difference in the sectors that are investing in Germany and the UK and also the scale of the companies that are being acquired. According to my own research there are more employees on average at Japan affiliated companies in the UK than there are for Japan affiliated companies in Germany.

More Japanese employers in Germany but fewer employees than UK

This may be because the big employers – Japanese car manufacturers – do not have production in Germany – unlike the UK with Nissan, Honda and Toyota. There are plenty of Japanese automotive component manufacturers in Germany, but they tend to be what is known in German as “Mittelstand” or medium sized companies.

Manufacturing represents around 20% of German GDP, similar to Japan. Germany has of course always had a strong reputation for engineering and German cultural values such as risk aversion and process orientation fit well with Japanese corporate mindsets.

Japanese expats in UK mostly in regional HQ and services roles

By contrast, only 11% of the UK’s GDP is derived from manufacturing and 80% of UK GDP is services, particularly financial services such as banking and insurance. This sector accounts for quite a few of the Japanese companies who have multiple subsidiaries in the UK, as well as trading companies, holding companies and services companies providing financing and other functions across Europe.

This might explain why UK has more Japanese residents than Germany – presumably acting as liaison and coordinators with Japan HQ for the region – around 63,000 compared to 46,000 in Germany. However, this number is falling for the UK, and increasing for Germany.

A drop in Japanese students and intra company transferees in UK since 2015

Does this mean that the UK is losing its role as the services centre for the region to Germany? Looking at the detail, it seems the main factor behind the drop in the number of Japanese in the UK is that there are 3,000 fewer Japanese students and academics in the UK compared to a year ago.**

Intra company transferees to the UK fell by 1% from 2015 to 2017 whereas there are now many hundreds more Japanese transferees living in Germany, the Netherlands and Eastern Europe than three years’ ago.

As Japanese manufacturing shifts eastwards in Europe, sales hubs are moving with them

Looking at the recent investments into the UK and Germany, the trends of the past few years still seem to hold. Investments into the UK are in the form of establishing regional holding companies, or M&A in biotech, information technology and services for the UK market such as car parking. Investments into Germany are mainly for the wholesale of electronic components and machinery. Sometimes these are German sales offices for Japanese companies who already have sales or manufacturing in the UK. As manufacturing shifts eastward in Europe, so the sales hubs are moving with them.

Update for 2019-2020

The above article was written for the Teikoku Databank News in October of 2018. Since then, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has published further data on Japanese nationals resident in Europe and Japanese companies operating in Europe, but unfortunately without the level of detail that was available previously.

The chart below summarises the data available for the UK and Germany – showing the continuing long term trend of an increase in Japanese companies and nationals in Germany, and a decline in Japanese companies and nationals in the UK. Overall across Europe, the number of Japanese companies and nationals has increased in the past five or so years, but more in Eastern Europe recently.

This is reinforced by the data collected by Toyo Keizai of Japanese expatriates working for Japanese companies, which also shows that the increase in Japanese nationals in Germany is primarily in non-manufacturing, with a corresponding decline in Japanese nationals working in non-manufacturing in the UK.

*This is the number of individual incorporated companies in 2018 – if you include all branches, and multiple subsidiaries, the figure is 966 Japanese entities in the UK compared to 1,839 in Germany as of Oct 2018 MOFA report

** Based on later conversations with the British Council, this steep drop in Japanese students coming to the UK may well be to do with changes in visa categories that are being monitored rather than an actual decline – most Japanese students prefer to study abroad for less than a year.

The original version of this article can be found in “Shinrai: Japanese Corporate Integrity in a Disintegrating Europe” available as a paperback and Kindle ebook on Amazon.

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Japanese companies in Europe say Brexit is their biggest worry for 2020

The annual Japan External Trade Relations Organisation (JETRO) survey of Japanese companies in Europe reveals that over 70% of Japanese companies expect their European operations to be profitable for the fifth year running, but concerns over an economic downturn in the region are higher than in previous years. Brexit came top of the list of management worries – selected by 56.5% of Japanese companies in Europe.

31% say Brexit has had a negative impact on their business so far, and 37.7% are expecting a negative impact in the future. 3.7% felt Brexit has had a positive impact on their business both now and will do in the future. A negative impact was felt by 54% of Japanese companies in the UK both now and in the future, with 2.1% of Japanese companies saying Brexit has had a positive impact and only 0.5% expecting it to have a positive impact in the future.

More than half of the 842 companies who responded cited Brexit as their biggest management concern, outstripping the perennial headache of recruiting and retaining employees. Unsurprisingly the group that was most worried was the manufacturing sector in the UK – but the services sector in Ireland and the UK also ranked Brexit highly as a concern. Nearly 70% of Japanese companies in Poland and Portugal picked Brexit as a key issue – significantly higher than the average for Japanese companies across Europe.

54% of Germany based Japanese manufacturers chose Brexit as their primary concern, but interestingly, the non-manufacturing sector in Germany was even more concerned by Brexit (59%). For all groups, the short term disruption from a no deal Brexit was the main reason for concern and the second biggest issue was the future relationship of the UK and the EU.

Japanese companies in the UK were worried about the impact Brexit would have on the UK economy, a cheapening £ making imports more expensive, changes to the UK regulatory and legal environment and exports to non-UK EU. Japanese companies in non-UK EU countries were most worried about exports to the UK, but also the impact of Brexit on the UK economy and on the EU economy.

Around 90% of Japanese companies were concerned about disruption to logistics and customs processes between EU and UK, considerably higher than concerns about tariffs being imposed (65%).

Japanese companies in the UK focused on freedom of movement of their employees

The worries about UK regulatory and legal changes were mostly focused on changes to the freedom of movement of people between the UK and EU. Over 50% of Japanese companies in the UK said this was their main concern, particularly those in the services sector.

In terms of countermeasures – 22% said they had either implemented or were implementing their contingency plans – particularly regarding regulatory and legal changes. Compliance with the REACH regulations for the chemicals industry and setting up a new operation were most cited as steps taken. Around 12% of UK based Japanese companies have or are in the middle of reorganising their supply chain and logistics and 4.4% have or are in the middle of reviewing their manufacturing organisation and 2.4% have or are reviewing their R&D structure. The most frequently cited measure taken by Japanese companies in non-UK EU was to secure financial passporting into non-UK EU.

Relocation from UK to EU (but some purchasing functions coming to UK)

In terms of moving out of the UK, the survey found that 3 companies had moved their EU regional HQ completely out of the UK, to Germany, and 10 had partially moved out – 5 to Germany, 3 to the Netherlands and 2 to Luxembourg. In 2015 19 companies said they wanted to expand their regional coordination function in the UK, compared to only 2 in 2019. More companies were expanding their regional HQs in Germany, Netherlands, France and Spain.

3 companies had moved their sales coordination out of the UK, to Germany, Czech Republic and Poland, 4 had partially shifted it, to Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. 2 companies had moved all their manufacturing out of the UK – 1 to Poland and one to Japan. 1 had partially moved their manufacturing to Hungary. Only 1 company had moved their R&D out of the UK, to Switzerland. 4 companies had moved their procurement function from the UK to Czech Republic, Italy, Spain and one company had moved their procurement function to the UK, from Asia.

4 companies are investigating moving their regional HQ from the UK to Germany and Italy, 2 partially moving their HQ to France and Czech Republic. 3 companies are considering moving their sales coordination to Germany and Italy or partially to Germany, France or Belgium.

1 company is considering moving all manufacturing to Japan, and 9 companies are considering partial relocation to Hungary, Germany, Czech Republic, Romania, Japan or elsewhere in Europe. 2 companies are considering wholly or partially moving their R&D to Germany or elsewhere in Europe.

14 companies in the UK are expecting to expand their high value added manufacturing in the UK, down from 25 in 2015 whereas 32 Japanese companies in Germany are expanding their high value added manufacturing. The Netherlands has become the third main host for Japanese high end manufacturing – 12 are expecting to expand their manufacturing there compared to only 2 in 2015.

12 companies are considering moving their procurement to Poland, Italy, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Asia or elsewhere in the EU. 3 companies are considering moving procurement to the UK from the EU, Poland, Portugal. 3 other companies are looking to move their procurement entirely out of Europe to countries such as South Korea or China.

The EPA is encouraging Japanese imports to EU

65.5% of Japanese companies who were importing from Japan to the EU and 53.1% of Japanese companies exporting to Japan from the EU said they were taking advantage of the EPA. Particularly notable were 80% of Japanese companies based in Italy (both importers and exporters) and 70% of Japanese companies in Spain. 62% of UK based Japanese companies were using the EPA to import from Japan (a lower proportion than Italy, Czech Republic, Spain, Poland, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany).

100% of Japanese companies in the logistics/warehousing, plastic components, rubber products sectors say they are using the EPA and over 70% of Japanese companies in the metal products, textiles, automotive parts, wholesalers, food and seafood processing sectors are using the EPA to import from Japan.

Sectors most making use of the EPA to export from the EU to Japan were the logistics/warehousing, automotive parts and wholesale sectors.

Overall, Japanese companies in the EU are importing 32.6% of their parts and raw materials (by value) from Japan, 1.2% up on the previous year – Japanese companies in Germany were importing the highest share of their procurement from Japan by value – 46.6%. Over 23% of Japanese companies in the EU expect to expand their procurement from Japan, particularly the services sector with 47.8% of wholesale and retail companies saying they will increase their purchases from Japan.

Economic outlook for Europe

Japanese manufacturers are however more pessimistic about prospects for 2020 than they were in 2019, with 36.7% expecting their profitability to worsen, compared to 26.6% expecting their profitability to improve. The causes differ from Western Europe to Eastern Europe – manufacturers in Western Europe expect falling demand to be the key factor whereas in Eastern Europe the primary concern is rising labour costs.

Around a third of Japanese companies are optimistic about the economic prospects in 2020 for the countries they are operating in, which is considerably down on the 57% who were optimistic for 2019 – this pessimism was particularly strong for Western European based manufacturing.

Hiring and retaining workers continues to be a headache for Japanese companies. This is especially an issue in Central and Eastern Europe and particularly at management level in Western Europe and at factory worker level in Central and Eastern Europe.

Around 50-55% of Japanese companies in Europe have or expect to maintain current employee levels – over a third have or expect to increase their workforce. 16% cut their workforce in the past year but only 11.3% expect to do so in 2020.

Strengthening selling to EU as a region

JETRO also sees evidence that Japanese companies are strengthening their approach to selling to the EU as a region, rather than individual countries. For the first time in their surveys, “The EU” outstripped Germany and Poland as the market that Japanese companies saw as the most promising for sales. Maybe this is another – psychological rather than regulatory – impact of the EPA.

Japanese companies say that strengthening their company’s brand, developing and strengthening the technical skills of their employees (particularly in Eastern Europe) and investing further in research and development are key to increasing sales in Europe.

So, as I have often said, Japanese companies are having to find ways to retain their integrity in a Europe and a world which is also dis-integrating, and Brexit is accelerating that process.

Brexit update for Japanese companies

I’ve been avoiding writing about Brexit this past few months, partly because I felt I had nothing more to say. Similarly, Japanese companies have stopped issuing warnings. Many have already made and even implemented their plans for a worst-case scenario of a hard or no deal Brexit. I hear they have also been advised by the Japanese government to leave the talking to diplomats and politicians.

Companies in the UK have also gone silent. Some because they have been told by the Johnson regime that if they speak out, they will jeopardise government contracts. In financial services – Japanese firms included – alternative, approved EU entities have been set up. There is even the chance of making some money on the chaos that will probably arise in the currency, bond and stock markets.

It is still impossible to make any confident predictions about what will happen. Maybe it is true that Boris Johnson will, at the very last minute, blame the EU for not offering a fresh deal, then ask the EU for an extension to Article 50 in order to have a general election. He would be hoping to fight this on a populist campaign and win a more substantial majority. Then he can ask the EU for a new deal, confident as Mrs May was not, that he has a majority in parliament to approve it – or a no deal if the EU will not offer any concessions.

The problem is that the deal offered to Mrs May was as good as could be expected given her red lines of an end to the freedom of movement of people, no jurisdiction over the UK by the European Court of Justice and no customs union with the EU. It is hard to imagine a Johnson government erasing any of those red lines.

Johnson’s main aim appears to be to remove the Northern Ireland border “backstop” that in effect keeps Northern Ireland inside the EU if no solution to keeping the border open with the Republic of Ireland is found. Perhaps there could be a fudge whereby the backstop is removed from the Withdrawal Agreement and put into the Political Declaration – meaning it is to be negotiated later – which would probably also require a longer transition period than the current two years.

So Japanese companies in the UK may find that after a tumultuous few months, the UK remains in a transition period for several years – technically not in the EU, but all conditions remaining the same, while negotiations drag on, ending in a hard Brexit.

In which case what Japanese companies have already done remains the best solution – manufacturers adjust supply chains to circumvent the UK, financial services companies keep most of their staff in the UK but have substantial presence in the EU too. And those Japanese IT, infrastructure and outsourcing companies who have recently been investing in the UK should stay quiet, in the hope of getting government contracts to assist with whatever new systems Brexit brings.

This article by Pernille Rudlin originally appeared in Japanese in the Teikoku Databank News, 11 September 2019

Japanese corporate integrity in a disintegrating Europe

I’ve made a screencast (12 minutes with captions – ably edited by my son) of my keynote speech at a Dutch Embassy event for Japanese companies on a clipper ship on the Thames last month. It looks at the challenges facing Japanese companies trying to build their employer brands in a disintegrating Europe. I explain how difficult is is for Japanese companies to build ‘virtual trust’ across Europe when they are used to implicit communication, sticking to Japanese processes and working as homogenous, Japanese speaking teams huddled into one office.

I introduce the five competencies Japanese companies and their employees need to build trust across cultures – ability to communicate, understanding mutual interests, respecting European and Japanese processes and regulations, being reliable and accountable and having a shared vision and values. You can also find them in my book “Shinrai: Japanese Corporate Integrity in a Disintegrating Europe” available as a paperback and Kindle ebook on Amazon.

Brexit and Japanese jobs in the UK – growing by acquisition or “new” jobs?

Those looking for “despite Brexit” good news may be reassured that employment in the UK by the biggest Japanese companies has grown by 22% since 2014/5, right in line with the growth in Japanese jobs across Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). About a quarter of the 750,000 people we estimate work for Japanese companies in the region are working in the UK, and so far there is no obvious divergence between the UK and the rest of EMEA in terms of overall job growth.

Big ticket acquisitions are the main driver of Japanese growth in the UK

But as we pointed out in previous posts looking at the trends across Europe, a distinction needs to be made between “new jobs” created in EMEA by Japanese greenfield investment, and investments which are acquisitions of existing jobs. Eastern Europe is the beneficiary of the former, particularly for the automotive sector, whereas the UK has been the target of the latter with big ticket acquisitions like SoftBank acquiring ARM, Mitsui Sumitomo acquiring Amlin, Sumitomo Rubber acquiring Micheldever, and NEC acquiring Northgate Public Services as well as Outsourcing acquiring various staffing and outsourcing companies.

Where are the “new jobs”?

These acquisitions account for the new entrants to the Top 30 ranking we have compiled below. They push out Fujifilm, Sumitomo Corporation, Japan Tobacco (who shut their factory in Northern Ireland last year) and Toshiba. The original Top 30 in 2014/5 have grown a more modest 10% if the acquisitive newcomers are not included. One of the highest climbers from the original 2014/5 ranking is the main Japanese creator of new jobs in the UK- Hitachi – in particular via their rail manufacturing and assembly plant at Newton Aycliffe.

There has not been a decline in automotive sector jobs in the UK – yet – however. In fact quite the reverse – there has been some growth in jobs in all three of the big Japanese car companies. But the trend is clear, as pointed out in previous posts, that even without Brexit, the drift of investment and jobs in the automotive sector is eastwards and to Africa. It’s easy to see how British people in those areas where Japanese automotive supply chains are active could blame the EU for job losses. Even though there actually weren’t that many EU grants enabling Japanese companies to transfer production from the UK to Eastern Europe – despite the rumours – merely by being members of the Single Market, and having lower labour costs, Eastern European countries are an obvious destination for new manufacturing investment.

Will Japan’s investment in the UK services sector be Brexit proof?

The investment in the UK by Japanese companies over the past three years has largely been through acquisitions in the services sector. This is not surprising, as services are 80% of the UK’s GDP and the UK’s comparative advantage in the region. It is also relatively Brexit proof in the sense that services sector investment will not be directly affected by any supply chain disruptions. Clearly if the UK economy takes a hit from Brexit, however, this will dampen demand for services. There has also been a shift of regional headquarters away from the UK by Panasonic and Sony and others, and of financial services companies, but as yet this has not hit UK jobs.

Eastern Europe has also been attractive to Japanese companies for business process outsourcing. Although Fujitsu is still – just – the top employer in the UK, employee numbers have dropped 29% – and there are now 13,000 people working for its service centres in Poland. NTT and its subsidiary NTT Data has also shot up the Top 30 both for the UK and the EMEA region – again through acquisitions – and has decided to base its new global ex-Japan headquarters in the UK.

Infrastructure, energy, transport should be the future for Japanese jobs in the UK

The UK’s strength as a global services provider will not disappear overnight, however hard the Brexit. But it’s hard to imagine how the kinds of secure, high quality automotive manufacturing jobs that those who voted for Brexit might have wanted to see return to the UK will come back, however soft the Brexit. The potential sunlit upland is in infrastructure – energy and transport. These sectors were needing investment regardless of whether the UK is in or out of the EU and are not so reliant on just in time supply chains across the region. Transport, environment and energy are areas where cooperation and financing on an EU-wide basis makes business and environmental sense though. But unfortunately Brexit has provided a distraction that has resulted in Hitachi freezing its Horizon nuclear power projects in Wales and Gloucestershire from lack of government financial support, and the recently called review of HS2 must also be giving Hitachi’s rail business and other Japanese executives cause for concern. Risk averse Japanese companies are not going to want to make multi million investments in infrastructure projects in a country which is politically unstable and unreliable.

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A no deal Brexit will put the boot in for Japanese companies in the UK

My first job at Mitsubishi Corporation was exporting British made shoes from companies like Trickers and Crockett & Jones to Japan. They are high end shoes anyway, and Japanese tariffs of 30% on shoe imports certainly pushed them even further upmarket. So when I was in Japan last month I was happy to see that one of our customers still had its Trading Post flagship shop in Aoyama, despite the so-called two lost decades in terms of economic growth. They must be one of the few businesses enjoying the fact that Brexit delays have improved their profit margins. Thanks to the new EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement, tariffs on European shoe exports to Japan were reduced to 21% from February of this year. They will eventually be eliminated over the next 10 years.

Trickers and Crockett & Jones are presumably shipping out shoes to Japan as fast as they can make them while the UK’s membership of the EU lasts. Although Japan has entered discussions with the UK on a trade deal, they have made it clear that they are not going to concede as much as they did to the EU, and leather goods is one of the categories they are going to use as a bargaining weapon.

No roll over is bad for British shoes, cheese and booze

So a no deal Brexit or a Brexit before a UK-Japan free trade agreement is struck is bad news for the UK shoe industry, (and British cheese makers and whisky distillers will also miss out on the EPA’s tariff reductions). But not rolling over the EU-Japan EPA in to a UK-Japan trade agreement as soon as the UK leaves the EU will only have a small direct impact on both economies. According to a JETRO survey of over 3,000 Japanese companies, from March of this year, only 8.6% import from the UK, compared to 24.1% importing from Western Europe (excluding the UK) 66.2% from China and 24.2% from the USA.

Conversely, 22% of Japanese companies export to the UK, compared to 35% exporting to non-UK Western Europe, 49.6% to the USA and 59% to China. It’s obvious from these figures why the US-China trade war is more concerning to Japan than Brexit.

You could argue that a UK-Japan free trade agreement would improve those percentages, but that’s an awful lot of shoes, cheese and booze to make any impact. Furthermore, a lot of the imports and exports between the UK and Japan may be EU related, rather than purely bilateral. Think car parts from Japan to build cars for European consumers, or UK generated professional services for a Japanese EU headquarters and its European subsidiaries.

But no deal with the EU is even more of a headache for Japanese companies in the UK

Japanese companies that have a presence in the UK (just under 10% of the companies surveyed) have made it very clear that a No (UK-EU) Deal Brexit would be a disaster for them – far more than the UK no longer being part of the EU-Japan EPA. As frequently pointed out, they invested in the UK as a gateway to the rest of Europe.

45% of the turnover of Japanese companies in the UK is sales to Europe according to figures from the annual reports of the 200 or so who give regional breakdowns of sales. The range is anywhere from close to 0% for companies selling everything from lighting to metal pressing to seeds just to the UK, through to 100% – largely automotive parts manufacturers who export almost all of their production to Europe, or at least sell it via their European headquarters in continental Europe.

Many of those who are focused on domestic UK sales are importing from Japan, China and Asia, or are at the end of a complex supply chain stretching across Europe. Some are not involved in trade of goods at all – for example NTT Data and Building Design Partnership. The latter is one of the many of the services sector companies that have recently become Japan-owned via acquisition. NTT is aiming to grow its UK government business after Brexit, but if the UK economy tanks thanks to a no deal, it may have to wait a while. A JETRO survey last year highlighted that a UK economic slump because of Brexit was at the top of the list of concerns for Japanese companies in the UK and the rest of the EU, even more than changes in regulation or currency fluctuations.

The UK looks to lose its crown as the top European destination for Japanese acquisitions

Japanese acquisitions of British companies continued after the referendum, but the 2019 JETRO survey shows that it is likely the UK will lose its crown as the top destination in the EU for Japanese foreign direct investment. Non-UK Western Europe is in the top five destinations for expanding business for manufacturing textiles, clothing, foods, petrochemicals/plastics, electrical machinery, electronic components, fine engineering and also specialist services. The UK does not feature at all in the top five of any of these sectors.

The UK’s service sector functions as a gateway to Europe is still the biggest influence on Japanese investment – the UK is a top 20 destination for expanding services such as regional coordination(#9), logistics (#13), R&D (#14), sales (#15) and localisation (#17), as well as high value added manufacturing (#17). However, non-UK Western Europe ranks higher and is in the top 10 destinations for all of these categories.

Brexit yanks the lid off some stinky realities for Japanese business in the UK

My least favourite Japanese expression is “kusai mono ni futa” – when it stinks, put a lid on it. It is at the root of many Japanese corporate governance scandals. Mistakes are made or problems surface and instead of exposing them and causing loss of face all round, they are swept under the carpet, in the hope that they will somehow magically disappear. But of course stinky things with lids on just get stinkier.

On the face of it, there was nothing stinky about Japanese companies in the UK. The very fact that the UK was such an easy place to do business – on a European and global scale – lulled Japanese companies into complacency. Japanese expatriates like living in the UK, particularly around London, where the vast majority of Japanese business people are based. A couple of years’ traineeship in London is also a great incentive to lure scarce young English speaking Japanese into your graduate recruitment scheme.

Brexit exposed complacency about profitability in the UK

Over 125 Japanese companies in the UK are the European headquarters, employing over 25,000 people (of the 160,000 UK employees in total who work for 1000 Japanese companies), with a combined turnover of over £40bn. Much of that turnover derived from management fees from Japan headquarters, dividends from European subsidiaries or royalties from intellectual property, so the profitability or otherwise of the UK business itself was not so exposed.

Profitability in manufacturing is far more obvious. Nissan, Honda and Toyota’s factories in the UK had high levels of productivity – they had to be to win the right to make each new model. But Honda never managed to sell enough of its cars in Europe for Swindon to reach full capacity. The car industry is going through a shift away from petrol and diesel to electric. Japanese manufacturers like to be near their key markets to develop new models, and for electric vehicles, China is a far bigger and more promising market than Europe. The supply chains for electric vehicles are more developed and close knit in their Japan base.

Brexit yanked the lid off some stinky realities. As the JETRO annual survey on business conditions for Japanese companies in Europe details, 60% of UK based Japanese companies predicted the future impact of Brexit on their business would be negative, and 25% said it had had a negative impact already. Most cited the threat to the supply chain of customs duties and customs procedures or divergence in regulations being introduced as their top concerns.

Over 90% of Japanese companies could withdraw their European headquarters from the UK because of Brexit

61% said that they had already decided to relocate/withdraw or had already relocated or withdrawn certain functions from their regional headquarters in the UK and another 32% are considering it – mostly as a partial relocation to another EU member state. As is well known, Panasonic and Sony have already done this. It was not just the threat of Brexit disrupting invoicing and customs clearance, but also in response as much to the new Japanese tax haven law. The UK’s lowering of the corporation tax rate of 17% to show Global Britain was still open for business meant revenue from dividends and royalties received in the UK would be considered as tax avoidance by the Japanese tax authorities.

More than two thirds of Japanese companies could withdraw their European sales functions from the UK

29% of Japanese companies in the UK have decided to relocate/withdraw or have already relocated/withdrawn their sales functions and a further 38% are considering doing so. Sharp Electronics has moved their inventory to Sharp in France along with responsibility for logistics and warehousing. Various automotive sector companies have moved customer accounts and product lines to Germany.

Moving sales or regional headquarter functions out of the UK does not have an immediate impact on jobs in the UK. In fact labour shortage is cited as the top concern for Japanese companies across Europe. So they are likely to try to hang on to the employees they have, and the regional management will just operate in a much more virtual way – Sharp says its UK base will still have an executive/board level responsibility for Europe, as that is where its European executives are currently based. For now.

Nearly two-thirds of Japanese manufacturers are withdrawing or considering withdrawing manufacturing from the UK

33% of Japanese manufacturers have decided to relocate or withdraw or have relocated or withdrawn their manufacturing from the UK and 30% are considering doing so. This may seem surprisingly low given the fuss made over the car companies and their supply chains being impacted by Brexit. But actually most Japanese manufacturers have alternative plants in Europe they can use if necessary. Those who do not are usually manufacturing highly specialised products that are less supply chain time critical, or for UK sales only or that they are presumably confident they can sell across Europe no matter what barriers there are.

No deal preparations

The JETRO survey did not specify the type of Brexit when asking Japanese companies in Europe in general about relocation or withdrawal plans, but did ask if any countermeasures had been taken for a no deal Brexit. Just over 10% of all Japanese companies – in the UK and Europe – had already made plans or were currently making plans. A further 15% of Japanese companies in the UK were intending to plan for no deal but only 4% of non UK EU companies were intending to plan (this was as of October 2018). The most popular countermeasure was stockpiling (21%), followed by reorganising functions within the company group (10%).

Financial services already prepared for all possibilities

All the Japanese financial services companies that would be affected by Brexit have already put their plans into action – most now have licenses for the UK and obtained financial passporting or licenses in the EU as necessary. Again, having to take a hard, cold look at their European operations has taken the lid off some long standing whiffy problems, particularly for Nomura, which looks like it will be shutting down its global wholesale side in London entirely.

No rollover and then there were none

Stockpiling as the main countermeasure for a no deal Brexit assumes that eventually a deal will be reached, before the stocks run out. But such deals take time. The EU-Japan European Partnership Agreement (EPA) started in 2013, finalised at the end of 2017, signed off in July 2018, and was in force from February 2019. Known as cars for cheese – it was actually meant to promote food and car exports both ways. Japan has already been promoting European wines and cheeses in its supermarkets and announced the first shipment of fully farmed tuna to Europe under the EPA agreement.

Similarly, reduction on tariffs on cars and car parts was meant to protect Japanese branded manufacturing in Europe (because they could easily import Japan manufactured parts) and help European car manufacturers export more cars to Japan.

Hard stinky cheese

If a no deal Brexit happens, although Japan started talks with the UK about rolling over the EPA, it has stated this would not be a cut and paste job. Japan is clear that it expects more concessions from the UK than in the EU deal – including cheese and cars. So British cheese makers may find their exports to Japan have a longer time to ripen than they were planning, in the event of a no deal.

Fewer Japanese in the UK, but more are making it their permanent home – thanks to Brexit?

The UK is still overwhelmingly the most popular place for Japanese residents in the EU to live, according to Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There are nearly 63,000 Japanese nationals living in the UK, compared to 46,000 in the next most popular country, Germany. The Japanese community in the UK has shrunk by 6% since 2014, however, whereas Germany’s Japanese community has grown by 22% over the same period.

In fact all other major EU countries have more Japanese people living in them than four years’ ago. It is only the UK that has shown a net fall in numbers. The Netherlands has had the biggest proportionate rise in Japanese residents since 2014 – 41% from 6,532 to 9,223.

On the face of it this would seem to be a Brexit related shift. The Netherlands and Germany have been the most popular alternative bases for shifting headquarters and sales staff to, away from the UK, as we noted in a previous post.

UK loss of global prestige as a destination for media and diplomats

But looking more closely at the different categories used by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for classifying Japanese nationals reveals some other non-business factors too. The biggest proportional decrease is in Japanese people in the government related category – a 44% fall from 1,286 to 722. In a further indication of the UK’s drop in global prestige perhaps, the number of media related Japanese nationals has dropped 26% from 371 to 273. The largest drop in numbers is in the academic/student category – down nearly 7,000 from 20,000 in 2014 – peaking at 21,000 in 2015 and declining since.

Japanese students also put off by hostile environment

The fall in student/academic numbers is worrying, as this is a good source of income for UK universities. When we looked at this a year ago, we noted that Japanese students are still studying in Europe – just more in Germany or France. Or, like one participant in my seminar yesterday, they’ve realised they can learn English by studying in Asian universities – which are cheaper and nearer to Japan.

Talking to Japanese specialist recruiters, it may also be that the UK’s “hostile environment” has made it more difficult for Japanese students to stay on in the UK after graduating, to find a job. The 27% increase in permanent residents who have Japanese nationality over the past 4 years suggests that Brexit and visa worries may have caused a large number (nearly 22,000 now) of Japanese resident in the UK to take the leap of acknowledging that they are going to stay in the UK permanently and need to make sure their status is secure.

Being reasonable in Europe

The UK government has twice now invoked the concept of “reasonable” in its negotiations with the European Union over Brexit. It’s vital that Japanese managers working in the UK understand this concept of “reasonable”, as it forms the basis of arbitration when there are disputes between companies and also grievances between employer and employee.

In August 2018, when visiting Japan, Dr Liam Fox the UK secretary of state for international trade urged Japan and other partners to talk to the EU and say “Britain has made you a fair and reasonable offer” and “if you reject that offer, and we end up with no deal, that would be to everybody’s detriment – the EU, the UK and our trading partners.”

Professor Anna Wierzbicka ‘s chapter “Being Reasonable” in her book “English: Meaning and Culture” points out that when British use “reasonable” in the way Dr Fox has, there is an implied value judgement, of the other side being “unreasonable” as in “silly”, “extreme” or “reckless”. Professor Wierzbicka was born and educated in Poland, and now lives in Australia, so has an informed but objective perspective on how this differs from the French and German equivalents. As Michel Barnier, European Chief Negotiator for the EU is French, his natural inclination will be to translate “reasonable” into “raisonnable”, which means to be sensible and capable of being reasoned with. Sabine Weyand, his deputy, is German. The definition of the German word for “reason”, Vernunft, includes the concept of “order” – that there is a correct process. “Reasonable” does not exist in the negative in French and is only used once in the French civil code and not at all in German law.

The more recent use of “reasonable” was by Geoffrey Cox, the UK attorney-general. He was proposing a system of arbitration to allow the UK to escape from the backstop plan for the Northern Ireland border by having arbitration independent of the European Court of Justice, which would judge whether the UK had made “reasonable” efforts to find alternatives if the talks had irretrievably broken down between the UK and the EU. International law however prefers to stick to “good faith”, “best endeavours” and binding assurances.

At this point most ordinary businesspeople want to give up in despair. Unless you are a lawyer, it becomes very hard to comprehend. Nonetheless, as businesspeople we do need to grasp the concept in order to manage and do business in the UK. So I hope my explanation of “reasonable” will help: When trying to persuade an employee to do something, such as overtime, or negotiating with a business partner, “reasonable” means three things if they are British. 1. You explained the reasons behind your request in a way that was easy to understand. 2. The request is not damagingly extreme (for example too expensive or too cheap a price) 3. The reasons were rational, logical, sensible. If they respond with “that seems reasonable” to your request, you have succeeded.

This article was originally published in Japanese in the Teikoku Databank News on 10th April 2019 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.

Are Japanese companies leaving the UK because of Brexit?

I’m afraid the answer to this question is yes, and no. Bits of Japanese companies are leaving. What will be left in the long run is some kind of UK-based training ground for Japanese companies’ star recruits to learn global management, with a local sales workforce attached.

I’ve come back from a recent trip to Japan clutching the brand new Toyo Keizai directory of Japanese companies overseas, which provides the data to dig into this question more deeply. It provides some clues as to whether, for example, Honda ending production in Europe is in part due to the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement reducing tariffs to zero on cars and car parts imported from Japan. If that was the case, there might be a general shift of automotive production away from the EU.

Asia is far more important to Japan than Europe

The number of Japanese companies overseas has increased 58% from 2008 to 2018, according to the Toyo Keizai data, to 31,574. The true number will be bigger, as I know from my researches into the UK, there are many Japanese companies that Toyo Keizai has not managed to track down, or who maybe just don’t respond to their surveys. 62% of Japanese companies overseas are in Asia (excluding Japan obviously), 15% in Europe, 14% in North America, 5% in Latin America, 2% in Oceania, 1% in Africa and 1% in the Middle East.

If you look at it by employee number, the proportion is roughly the same – 68% in Asia, 11% in Europe, 11.8% in North America, 6.6% in Latin America, 1.5% in Oceania, 0.7% in Africa, 0.4% in the Middle East. An obvious factor in why there are proportionately more employees to number of companies in Asia and Latin America is the greater number of manufacturing operations in those regions.

So already we see Europe represents 11-15% of the business of Japanese multinationals, and those companies are relatively less likely to be manufacturing operations than in Asia or Latin America.

The number of Japanese companies in Europe has increased 35% in ten years

Japanese companies have not been pulling out of Europe, however. There was a 35% increase in the number of companies in Europe 2008-2018, so not far off the average global increase of 37%. The biggest growth was in Latin America – 47%, then the Middle East (45%) and Africa (43%) – but from a small base. The number of companies in Asia grew 38% and only 30% in North America.

Growth in the number of Japanese companies overseas has been more muted in the past 4 years – a 7.9% increase 2015-2018. But the increase in the number of Japanese companies in Europe was above average – at 12.5%. The increases in companies in Asia (7.6%) and Latin America (5.6%) were below average – so there was a boom in Japanese investment in developing countries during the 2008-2014 period, but this died down in the past 4 years.

Japanese automotive manufacturers are not pulling out of Europe – quite the reverse

So how about investment in automotive manufacturing – the sector that has made the most noise in Brexit UK? The number of Japanese companies overseas in the “transportation machinery manufacturing” category that Toyo Keizai uses (which presumably corresponds to automotive manufacturing) rose 6% 2015-2018, so significantly slower growth than overall. Again, Europe showed above average growth of 13%, but only represents 10% of transportation machinery manufacturers overseas operations. Over 64% of automotive manufacturer sites are in ex-Japan Asia. So although Japanese automotive companies are not pulling out of Europe – rather the reverse – the major part of Japanese automotive investment is and continues to be in Asia. So no surprises really that Honda and others are choosing to focus on Asia for electric vehicle development – that is where the largest ecosystems and supply chains are based.

UK is still has the most automotive manufacturers in Europe, but is not getting any new investment

How about the UK in all of this? The UK had and continues to have the largest number of automotive related manufacturers in Europe, according to Toyo Keizai – 32 in 2015 (out of 192 in Europe) and 30 in 2018 (out of 217). I haven’t been able to identify both of the companies that have withdrawn from the UK, but one is almost certainly Keihin, 41% owned by Honda, who shut down production of vehicle engine management systems and climate control systems in the UK in 2014-5 and shifted production to the Czech Republic. The other might be more to do with renaming and consolidation rather than withdrawal of manufacturing.

Keihin’s move is clearly “pre-Brexit” but what is obvious is that the UK is not getting any new investment in the automotive sector since Brexit. Of the 29 new automotive manufacturing operations started in Europe in 2015-2018, 8 were in Germany, 4 in France, 4 in Slovakia, 3 in Spain, 3 in Italy, 3 in Hungary and 2 in the Czech Republic but none in the UK. Germany, France and the Czech Republic are now not far behind the UK in the number of automotive production sites that they host.

So the idea that the zero tariffs on cars and car part imports from Japan which would eventually arise from the EU-Japan Economic Partnership has meant that it is no longer attractive to manufacture cars and car parts in the UK or the rest of the EU also does not seem to hold – yet. In fact I was surprised to see that Western Europe has held up well against the cheaper Eastern European countries.

UK employees of Japanese companies up 20% on 2015, mainly due to acquisitions

Generally, the number of Japanese companies in the UK is still rising – 972 in 2018 according to Toyo Keizai, 11.1% up on 2015. The other countries in the top 5 – Germany, Netherlands, France and Italy are all hosting more Japanese companies too, and the numbers have grown slightly faster than in the UK, by between 11.8% to 13.5% over the past 4 years.

Many of the new Japanese in companies in the UK over the past few years have been acquisitions in biotech/pharma, high tech, outsourcing/staffing, automotive services and new arrivals have been in fintech, or investment/holding companies.

So what about the companies that have said they are leaving the UK because of Brexit, such as Panasonic and Sony? Well, rather like Keihin, they are not actually leaving the UK, just moving some functions, in this case the regional headquarters functions rather than manufacturing, to the Netherlands or Germany. This kind of “leaving” – turning what were incorporated subsidiaries into branches, has emerged in other Japanese companies too, as one reaction to Brexit. Invoicing, tax on sales, royalties etc will all be taken care of by the regional headquarters, and the UK branch will be funded by management fees.

So although the numbers employed by Japanese companies in the UK continue to rise (by 20% since 2015), this is more the result of acquisition of existing staff, rather than the creation of large numbers of new jobs that greenfield manufacturing investment brings.

During my trip to Japan last week I met with Leo Lewis, Financial Times Tokyo Correspondent, and it is to him that I owe the insight that Japanese companies will never leave the UK completely, as it is too attractive an incentive to their highflyers, to be able to promise a couple of years early in their career to learn the ropes of global business in the UK. But bits will nonetheless leave, as the recent news about Nomura’s restructuring shows.