Japanese business in Europe Archives

Has the time come for Japan’s Nadeshiko Brand to include overseas female employees?

The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced in October last year that they are revamping their their Nadeshiko* Brand – the annual selection of Japanese companies that are outstanding in their encouragement of the success of women in the workplace. As well as quantitative questions, this time they are asking more qualitative questions, on areas such as “whether the systems and measures to promote [women’s success in the workplace] are linked to management strategies.” The aim is to evaluate “whether each company has visualized a consistent story whether they are conveying information effectively throughout Japan and overseas”. The background to this change seems to be the increasing pressure on Japanese and other multinationals to be more transparent – for example making more disclosures of information such as the gender pay gap reporting requirement in the UK.

I am wondering whether this evaluation will cover more than the communication of initiatives overseas. Will they also be including their overseas employees in their quantitative questions, and also in the systems and measures? It has been a longstanding bugbear of mine that many Japanese companies publish plenty of information about the diversity of their Japanese workforce, but very little detail about their overseas employees. In the case of Japanese trading companies, they do not publish any figures on the numbers of people that are working at their overseas subsidiaries. It would seem they literally do not count.

When I last took a look at the boards of the largest Japanese companies in the UK, in 2016, it was clear there were fewer women on the boards of Japanese companies in the UK than there were even in Japan. I also found differences in the degree of national diversity – some boards in the UK were all Japanese (and almost all men), and some hardly had any Japanese on the board.

Seven years on, there has undoubtedly been progress, of sorts. The pressures that I pointed to in 2016, such as the stricter demands from UK and other financial regulatory authorities on Japanese financial services companies to have more diverse boards or for Japanese companies who are public sector suppliers (Hitachi, Fujitsu) to be more diverse have worked.

Fujitsu UK proudly points out on its website that it was one of the first companies to report on its gender pay gap, in 2017, since when, there has been a 44% reduction in the median gap to 10% and a 43% reduction in the mean to 9.6%. They have also published their first ever ethnicity pay gap, even though this is not a government mandated requirement. They also have a female Managing Director for the UK, a first I believe. She and the former UK MD and the head of Global Legal (both male) are the three board members – there are no Japanese board directors. In 2016 there were 6 people on the board, all male, one of whom was Japanese. The board in Japan has also undergone an overhaul, as have many Japanese boards, with the governance laws mandating them to appoint external directors. Fujitsu Japan has only two representative directors, both Japanese males, and 6 external directors, two of whom are female and one is an American male (albeit a fluent Japanese speaker and permanent resident in Japan). Fujitsu was a Nadeshiko brand in 2016, but not since.

Daiwa Capital Markets Europe also recently appointed its first ever female CEO – who is dual nationality British/South African. There are nine members of the DCME board in the UK, five of whom are non executive directors and the majority of whom are not Japanese. Of the non-executive directors, 3 are female non-Japanese, 2 are male Japanese. The other three members of the board besides the CEO are one Japanese male in the UK, 1 Japanese male in Japan and one South African/British male in the UK, who is the Chair. The holding company for Daiwa Capital Markets Europe, Daiwa Securities, has been a Nadeshiko brand every year since 2013. Its gender pay gap in the UK is nonetheless quite high for 2021, above the financial institutions average of 32% for the mean, at 38.8% mean, 37.9% median. Perhaps this will change with the new CEO in place.

The services sector has rather different challenges to the automotive manufacturing sector both in Japan and in the UK. In Japan, only Toyota group member Aisin is a Nadeshiko brand in the transportation equipment category. Nissan points out that 92% of its 7,342 employees, across manufacturing, design, parts and sales and marketing in the UK are male. Looking at their gender pay gap numbers, it’s clear that there is a higher proportion of women in bonus attracting, presumably white collar jobs and middle management, and a higher percentage of men than women are in lower paid blue collar jobs. Nonetheless, a gender pay gap of 6.4% median and 8.7% mean was identified. The UK boards of both the manufacturing and the sales and marketing side are 100% non-Japanese in composition, but no female representation. Nissan was named as a Nadeshiko brand in 2017 but not since.

Presumably, as in previous years, the announcement of the FY2022 Nadeshiko brands will be made in March 2023. It will be interesting to see what has changed.

* Nadeshiko is a Japanese flower that is also native to northern Europe – “pink”, of course.

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Who’s getting the biggest pay rises in Japanese companies in Europe?

If you’re in Hungary, Poland or Romania and you’re working in construction or engineering or in IT for a Japanese company, you’re in luck.

According to a survey by JETRO of Japanese companies in Europe, of the 857 organisations who responded, employees in Romania, Hungary and Poland are seeing pay rises of well over 7.5% to 8.5%, whereas employees in Western European countries such as Italy, Finland and Sweden are getting less than 3%. Those countries with the largest numbers of Japanese companies – Germany, UK, France – are seeing pay rises ranging between 3.5 to 4.5%.

The top three sectors with the highest pay rises were:

2022/23: Construction/Plant/Engineering (6.25%), Communication/IT/Software/Information system/Digital services (5.95%), Rubber products (5.87%)
2023/24: Other manufacturing industries (7.50%), Non-banking financial institutions (7.17%), Non-ferrous metals (6.00%)

These seem to be indicators of where demand is the strongest and therefore competition for employees. We’ve heard quite a few cases of Japanese companies expanding in Romania recently, not only in manufacturing but also IT services and logistics. Hungary has been a hotspot for a while now, particularly in automotive manufacturing.

Top issues for Japanese companies in Europe, Middle East and Africa for 2022/3

The annual survey by JETRO of Japanese multinationals shows that many are struggling to return to pre-COVID levels of profitability. 65% of the 7,000 companies surveyed expect to be profitable by the end of FY 2022 (March 31 2023) but the automotive parts sector is forecasting widening losses.

Expectations for profitability are slightly higher in Europe than the global average and within the region, on a country by country basis, business prospects are overall more positive for Japanese companies in the Netherlands and Germany than for those in France or the UK. On the other hand, due to logistics, procurement and energy costs, 35% of Japanese manufacturers in Eastern Europe are expecting their business prospects to worsen, only just balanced out by the 36% who expect their business prospects to improve. Increasing labour costs and hiring and retention even outweigh the impact of the Ukraine war for Japanese companies in Europe as the key challenge. This is also seen as a challenge in Western Europe, but with more focus on white collar, managerial workers, particularly in Germany and the Netherlands.

More than 70% of Japanese companies in the Netherlands, UK, Germany and UAE are expecting to achieve profitability in FY2022. However only 37.9% of companies in the region expect profits to improve, 11.8% lower than 2020/21. More than half of the Japanese companies based in Finland, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Czech Republic and Portugal are expecting profits to improve – compared to 46.7% of Japanese companies in the Netherlands, 44.4% in the UK, 38.1% in France, 36.4% in Germany, 35.3% in UAE and 31.1% in South Africa. Manufacturers in the UK, having not recovered as quickly as in the rest of Europe from the pandemic, are now more optimistic about profitability for 2022/23 than other manufacturers in the region.

45% of Japanese companies are expecting to expand their business in their region over the next 1-2 years, but do not expect to return to full pre-COVID levels because of rising costs. One bright spot is increasing investment in the human resources and hospitality sectors, thanks to the lifting of coronavirus restrictions.

Within EMEA, more than 50% are expecting to expand their business in Denmark, Portugal, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Ireland and Romania. When asked about expanding “functions”, Germany, UK and the Netherlands were the top 3 for expanding sales functions, Germany, Netherlands and Czech Republic for expanding manufacturing and Germany, France, Spain, UK and Belgium were top for R&D. Overall, particularly for the UK, the mood seems to be “keeping things as they are”

Trade

Over 50% of Japanese companies in the UK say that Brexit has had a negative impact on their business, mainly due to (in rank order) increased customs clearance processes, delays and costs of logistics, imposition of tariffs, responding to new UK regulations (eg the CE vs UKCA mark), customers leaving the UK and difficulties in hiring. 40% of Japanese manufacturers in the UK say they are experiencing problems in exporting to the EU.

37.9% of UK based companies say they are using the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement for their exports to the EU, 12.9% up on the previous year. The main reason given for not using it was that their exports were already tariff free, or did not fall within the agreement. The main challenges in using the TCA were setting up their own internal systems, getting the cooperation of EU based suppliers or customers and interacting with customs. Securing human resources was cited by 50% of the Japanese companies in the UK as a negative impact of Brexit (61.5% for manufacturers), compared to only 9.8% of Japanese companies in the EU saying they were concerned about this as a result of Brexit.

49% of Japanese companies in the EU are using the EU Japan Economic Partnership Agreement for importing from Japan to the EU and 34% are using the agreement to export from the EU to Japan. More than half of Japanese companies in Austria, Italy, Czech Republic, France and Spain are using the EPA to import to the EU. The sectors with the highest use of the EPA are chemicals, wholesale, foods, plastic products and transportation equipment.

Localization of supply chains and staff

60% of Japanese manufacturers globally are expecting to review their supply chains in the future months. Localization of procurement, production and sales is accelerating due to rising raw material and transportation costs and the emergence of supply chain disruption risks. Within Europe, 48.2% of all companies have reviewed their supply chains and 55.5% expect to review them in the coming year.

In Europe, however, there is more interest in localising procurement within the EU than within the country of location. 21.4% of Japanese companies in Western Europe, 32.1% of Japanese companies in Central and Eastern Europe and only 9.5% of Japanese companies in the UK are expecting to increase domestic procurement, whereas 34.3% of Japanese companies in Western Europe and 45.8% of companies in Eastern Europe are expecting to increase their procurement within the EU. No UK companies are expecting to increase their procurement from the EU and no Eastern European Japanese companies are expecting to increase their procurement from the UK either.

Around 20% of European companies are expecting to increase procurement from Japan, but significantly more (around 35%) are expecting to increase procurement from ASEAN countries.

Japanese companies are also planning to reduce the number of expatriate staff sent from Japan, and increase the number of locally hired staff, particularly in Asia. The pandemic has accelerated the ability to manage the business remotely, from Japan. Within EMEA, 28.9% are expecting to increase their Japanese expats to the Netherlands, compared to a 22.1% increase to UAE, 19.3% increase to Germany, 18.1% to the UK and 13.3% to France and 6.6% to South Africa. 13.3% are expecting to reduce the number of Japanese expats in the Netherlands, 12.4% in Germany, 6.4% to the UK, 16.7% to France.

In terms of hiring more local employees, Japanese companies in Germany came top with 44.3% wishing to do so, then South Africa with 39.5%, Netherlands with 38.9%, France with 37.7%, UK with 36.1%, UAE with 35.9%. 10% of Japanese companies in Germany and the Netherlands were planning to reduce local staff numbers, compared to 11.3% in the UK, 9.8% in France, 9.3% in South Africa, and 4.9% in the UAE.

Whereas automation and reduction of the workforce had been a top priority for manufacturers before 2020, while this is still at number 2, the top priority for the next few years is investment in new equipment and new projects. The third highest priority is revising manufacturing location. The reasons underpinning these priorities are the need to optimise production costs, the high cost of labour and the high cost of raw materials.

CSR and supply chains

A third of Japanese multinationals are doing due diligence on human rights in their supply chains, particularly in Europe, where regulations are being introduced. 46.2% of Japanese companies in the UK are already doing due diligence – compared to 42.9% in France, 30.3% in Germany and 23.2% in the Netherlands. Sectors which are particularly concerned with human rights are mining and minerals, plastic products, non ferrous metals, textiles, construction and foods.

42.4% of Japanese multinationals have started taking steps to reduce their carbon emissions, 9% up on the previous year. 20% of Japanese companies are proceeding with “green procurement” for their suppliers. Portugal, Switzerland, Ireland, Austria, Spain and France score particularly highly in terms of taking steps to reduce carbon emission with over 70% of companies in those countries already having done so, compared to 63.6% in South Africa, 58.3% in the UK, 55.2% in the Netherlands, 51.5% in UAE and 50% in Germany.

Actions taken include reducing energy usage, using more electric power, using more renewable or new energy sources, with solar being the most popular. Other actions have included developing new environmentally friendly products, green procurement and revising procurement and logistics. The interest in green investments is at a record high, greater than digital investments or eco friendly transportation or tourism.

Sales

The most promising sales destination for Japanese companies in Europe continues to be Poland, for the fourth year running. Turkey has overtaken Germany for the first time in 7 years and the UK is back in the top 10. Other Eastern European countries in the top 10 are Hungary, Czech Republic and Romania – mainly for their economic growth prospects. The other Western European countries in the top 10 are France, Italy and Spain.

Japanese companies in the UK are showing an increasing focus on the UK domestic market for their sales, with an average of 49.4% of sales to the UK market, 2.4% up on 2021/2, compared to a European average of domestic sales of 37.7%. UK companies are selling on average 16.5% of sales to EU countries, compared to 37.6% of sales to other EU countries (excluding their own country) for Japanese companies located in the EU. Unsurprisingly, Japanese companies in the UK have become more UK oriented since Brexit, as many of the EU sales and coordination functions have shifted from the UK to the EU – and is now potentially stabilising after the sharp decline over 2019/20 to 2021/2

Although the proportion of sales to non-EU Europe (presumably Norway, Switzerland, maybe Turkey) is higher for the UK (16.3%) than for Europe overall (4.4%), there is not much evidence that the UK is being used as a base for sales outside Europe – the proportion of sales to North America (1.7%) or China (1.3%) is actually slightly lower than for the whole of Europe. Sales to Japan have been falling steadily since 2019 (possibly related to Honda Civic sales to Japan). The proportion of sales to “other” countries is higher – 8.5% compared to 6.5%, perhaps showing that some Japanese companies in the UK are indeed Europe, Middle East and Africa headquarters, with sales focused more on the latter regions. ASEAN only accounted for 1% of the 7% of sales to other countries in 2019/20.

Hybrid working and pay rises

European employees of Japanese companies are not returning to the workplace at anything like the rate they are in South West Asia, North West Asia or ASEAN. During 2021, 14.6% of Japanese companies in Europe said that 90% or more of their employees were working at their office or factory and only 29.6% were expecting this to happen in 2022/3 in Europe. In Asia, around 30% of companies said their over 90% of employees were working at the office or factory in 2021 and this is expected to be near to 70% in 2023. This may reflect that there are proportionately more manufacturing companies in Asia than in Europe.

In terms of reviewing management and personnel policies and structure, by far the most popular choice for review was human resource development and training – chosen by 61.6% of Japanese multinationals. Second was reviewing working from home policies, at 35.3%, closely followed by reviewing staff remuneration at 32.3%. The next three topics were all chosen by around 27% of Japanese companies – digitization of workflows, reviewing the expat staff structure and localising management.

Pay rises are highest in emerging markets such as Brazil, India, Mexico, Vietnam and South Africa and in Europe – Hungary, Poland, Romania and Czech Republic – at around 6 to 9% over the past two quarters, whereas despite the high inflation rates, pay is only expected to rise by 2.7% to 4.6% in the Netherlands, Germany, UK, France and UAE.

Update – this article has been added to since the publication of a European focused version of the survey by JETRO in December 2022.

Rhymes from history – the Japanese Business Mission to Britain – 100 years’ ago

I’ve been researching the visit of the Japanese Businessmen’s Mission to Britain, which ended a hundred years’ ago, to see if there are any parallels with today.

The visit took place around the time that the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 became defunct, superseded by the Four Power Treaty of the Washington Conference between Japan, the UK, the USA and France. The conference ended in February 1922, but it was not until the treaty was ratified in August 1923 that the Alliance was officially terminated.

The alliance was originally directed against Russian expansionism in the Far East, and latterly to deal with the threat from Germany, but by 1921 Britain no longer feared Russia, and Germany had been defeated in WWI. Instead, Britain wanted to maintain close relations with the United States, which had a more hostile attitude towards Japan and saw potential conflicts of interest in the Pacific region and China.

The mission, led by Dan Takuma, visited the United States, Britain and France from October 1921 to February 1922, deliberately coinciding with the Washington Conference. There was some confusion in Britain over what to call the mission – sometimes it was referred to as an industrial mission, sometimes as a commercial mission, but it seems from accounts of the speeches that many of the British hosts were well aware that there was also a diplomatic agenda.

Japan had become a net exporter and a creditor nation as a result of WWI, deeply involved in the international economy. Shibusawa Eiichi felt that this was the moment for Japan to strengthen its global influence, by ensuring its economic and social infrastructure was up to the level of a developed nation.

As a consequence, the members of the zaikai (powerful business people) on the mission showed as much interest in British labour relations, the cooperative movement and the Federation of British Industries as visiting shipyards and factories or discussing tariffs and trademarks. They also were keen to understand Britain’s transportation infrastructure. After their tour of Britain, they went to France to inspect the newly formed International Chamber of Commerce.

There was plenty of talk during the dinners and lunches for the mission, hosted by British businessmen, of keeping open doors in trade. However, it was clear the British were beginning to see Japan as a competitor in its colonies, particularly in cotton goods. Dr Dan responded to this by saying that the competition for both Japan and Britain would be China.

The Japanese mission was worried that the end of the Anglo-Japanese alliance might therefore lead to more trade barriers, as well as harm Japan’s global standing, as the alliance had been proof of Japan’s creditworthiness.

It seems they were right to be worried. Once the Great Depression hit in 1929, the US became more protectionist. In 1932, Britain implemented the Imperial Preference tariff policy, of home producers first, empire producers second, and foreign producers last – the same year that Dan Takuma was assassinated.

This article was originally published in Japanese in the Teikoku Databank News on 9th March 2022

77% of Japanese companies in Europe say the Ukraine war has had a negative impact on their business

77% of Japanese companies in Europe have had their business negatively impacted by the war in Ukraine, according to a survey conducted by JETRO in September 2022. The manufacturing industry was particularly hard hit, at 83.7% and Japanese companies in Belgium (92.5%), France (87.5%) and Spain (86.2%) had the highest proportion of all countries reporting a negative impact. This may be linked to the industries most expressing concern about negative impacts – food, automobiles/motorcycles and electrical and electronic equipment. France is host to a number of Japanese food related companies and Belgium is the European headquarters of Toyota and other related automotive companies.

The main negative impacts were an increase in energy price, an increase in raw material and resource price and confusion and congestion of logistics.

The main responses to negative impacts of the invasion of Ukraine were “passing on price rises to customers” (50.5%) and diversifying procurement sources (27.5%). Manufacturers were also increasing inventory more than they were trying to find new customers.

More general concerns were rising and persistently high costs, including energy, and the extension of the frontiers of the war, the use of nuclear weapons and attacks on nuclear power plants, as well as any increase or prolongation of uncertainty about the future – when the war would end, when it would be possible to resume business with Russia.

Continued fall in UK employment by Japanese companies

Around a half of the 1,100 or so Japanese companies in the UK have filed their annual reports for the financial year 2021/2. Most paint a positive picture of recovery from the pandemic and resilience to any impact from Brexit. However, the employee totals show a more worrying trend emerging.

Overall, the total number employed by those Japanese companies in the UK who have reported their results has fallen by 8% over the past year. This is an acceleration of a decline which started three years ago – employee numbers had fallen 3% the previous year, and 2% the year before that. This was preceded by a couple of years of growth from 2016/7 to 2018/9. Projected, this suggests that the number of people employed by Japanese companies in the UK will fall to 158,000 by the end of the financial year 2021/2, below the 161,000 that were employed by Japanese companies in 2016/7 and a 14,000 drop on the numbers employed in 2020/1.

A number of factors might be behind this rise to 2018/9, followed by a fall, and more recently a sharp fall. It could be that Japanese companies continued to invest in growing their UK businesses, until the likely Brexit deal became clearer towards the end of 2019, and then the impact of Brexit played out after 31 January 2020 through to when the transition arrangements ended on December 31 2020.

It could also be that Japanese companies laid off people during the pandemic (although the decline in employment started before early 2020 in some sectors) and then were hit further by the Great Resignation in the past year.

It is certainly partly due to the impact of Honda closing its Swindon factory in July 2021. That meant the loss of nearly 3,000 jobs and it looks likely a further 5,000 jobs will have been lost in the automotive sector over the past year – many of which were dependent on Honda. The decline in employment in the automotive sector began in 2018/9, a year or two before other sectors began to lose jobs.

So what about the 6,000 jobs that look to be disappearing in other sectors? Finance seems to have stayed steady, even growing slightly, employing around 14,000 people, but non-financial services, after years of high growth, are beginning to show a decline, maybe by 1,000 or so to around 55,000.

Wholesale (not including automotive), having grown strongly to 2019 has dropped around 5,000 or so jobs in the past couple of years, employing around 38,000 people. This could be reflection of the change in structure of Japanese wholesalers in Europe, who have moved their EU logistics and warehousing to the continent. There are also another 1,000 or so jobs likely to be lost in non-automotive manufacturing sectors.

We have not been able to publish a final Top 30 UK for 2020/2021 of the largest Japanese corporate groups, as there are still outstanding annual reports due to be filed at Companies House for NTT and NEC. Taking both of those groups out, it seems the biggest employers are cutting back, deliberately or through passivity, on their employee numbers in the UK. The decline represents around 5,000 jobs, 5% of the 97,000 who were employed by the big corporate groups in 2019/20, and it seems likely the total will fall further in 2021/2022. This is not just because of the Honda Swindon closure feeding through, but also from factoring in the 700 or so fewer staff at SoftBank-owned ARM, down from the 3,700 peak a year or so ago, when it fulfilled its 2016 promise to double its workforce in the UK.

The key question, particularly for Brexit watchers, is whether this decline in employment by Japanese companies in the UK is also occurring in the rest of the region. The Top 30 Japanese companies in Europe, Middle East and Africa employed around 577,000 people as of the annual reports for the year ending 2022. The data for Yazaki is yet to come in, but for the remaining 29 companies (which includes Honda), there was a 2% increase in employees in the region. Without the loss of 4,500 jobs at Honda UK companies, this would have been a 3% increase. So while EMEA has seen gradual growth in numbers employed by Japanese companies in the past couple of years, the UK has seen an accelerated decline.

Top 30 Japanese employers in the Netherlands 2022

While there is no doubt that Japanese companies have expanded at a very high rate these past few years in the Netherlands, measuring this in terms of numbers of employees or companies has become increasingly complex.

Partly this is due to the large proportion of potentially “brass plate” type Japanese companies, with no employees in the Netherlands – often the regional holding company for a group of companies. Partly it is due to the lack of disclosure – information on companies in the Netherlands does not seem to be as readily available as it is in the UK, where data on Companies House can be freely accessed. As a result, even when an employee figure is disclosed for a Japanese company in the Netherlands, it can sometimes turn out to be the employee total for the whole of the European or EMEA region. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs data also shows this in the large number of Japanese companies it labels “uncategorised.”

With those caveats in mind, we have attempted a Top 30 largest employers for the Netherlands (which can be downloaded for free below this post). If you would like a more detailed, company by company analysis, giving all 123 companies within the 30 corporate groups, and their size where available, this is available as a pdf for £9.99/€12. Please contact us for payment via PayPal.

Look out for the regional headquarters

The pdf also indicates whether a company is the regional headquarters. Whether you’re targetting Japanese companies as potential customers or employers, it is important to understand this, as the regional headquarters tend to be where the decision makers, big budgets and the most interesting career paths will be based. The number of Japanese expatriates in the country is also an indication of where the decision making influencers are. Although the Netherlands is only the 5th largest host of Japanese nationals in Europe, after the UK, Germany, France and Italy, this number has grown 41% since 2015.

Services is the growth sector

It’s also useful to know which sectors and companies are growing – for the Netherlands the main focus is services – financial services such as Orix (who acquired Dutch asset management company Robeco), logistics companies such as Yusen Logistics, in the NYK group, and recruitment and staffing companies – Outsourcing Inc and Recruit Holdings have both grown rapidly recently through acquisitions of Otto Workforce and USG People. Mitsubishi Corporation shot to near the top of the Top 30 with its acquisition of Dutch energy company ENECO in 2020.

Overall growth picture

As a result of this growth, we estimate there are now around 566 Japanese companies (excluding minority stake holdings and brass plates with no employees) in the Netherlands. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs data records 673 Japanese businesses (including joint ventures, equity stakes), an 86% increase on 2015.

The companies we have identified employ around 48,000 people, a 29% increase on 2017/8 – the vast majority (39,000) of whom work for the Top 30 employers in the Netherlands. Japanese companies in the UK, by comparison, employ around 170-180,000 people, and there has been a slight decline in numbers over the past 5 years.

Click the link below for a free pdf download of the Top 30 largest Japanese employers by company grouping in the Netherlands:

FREE PDF DOWNLOAD OF THE TOP 30 LARGEST JAPANESE EMPLOYERS IN THE NETHERLANDS

The post-Brexit branchification of the UK for Japanese companies in Europe

The latest Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs data reveal that the number of Japanese businesses in the EU rose a further 2% from 2020 to 2021, to 8,464, up 28% on ten years ago. The only EU country to show any decline was Belgium. The picture for the UK is rather different – an 11% decrease on ten years ago, from 1,083 businesses to 960. There has been a slight pick up in the past two years, from a low of 951 in 2019.

The branchification of the UK

Digging further into the detail – and comparing the UK to other major hosts of Japanese companies such as Germany, France and the Netherlands – reveals some possible factors in this divergence. The numbers of businesses started in the UK by Japanese nationals showed the biggest decline. This could be because the businesses were bought out, the founder retired and shut down the company – or perhaps became British.

There is also a confirmation of a trend we noticed previously, that the number of subsidiaries incorporated in the UK has fallen, but at the same time there has been an increase in the number of UK branches of European subsidiaries of Japanese companies. This probably includes those operations which were incorporated subsidiaries but have now become branches of the European HQ in Germany or the Netherlands – such as Sony, Panasonic, Nikon, Bridgestone and Alps Alpine.

Switching to becoming a branch was partly a reaction to Brexit but in the former two cases may also have been a precautionary measure because of the change in Japanese tax haven laws. As we noted previously, the UK’s 2016 “open for global business” announcement that the corporation tax rate would fall to 17% in 2020 (it didn’t) would have meant that revenue from dividends and royalties received in the UK would be considered as tax avoidance by the Japanese tax authorities.

The decline in Japanese businesses in the UK had set in as early as 2012, long before Brexit, but accelerated after Brexit – it precipitated trends that were already there, and prompted Japanese companies to do some long overdue regional consolidation and tidying up.

This branchification of the UK and regional consolidation is reflected in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs data for Germany – the number of branches of Japan HQ in Germany has fallen by 45% and the number of incorporated subsidiaries has risen by 21% over the past 10 years. There has also been a significant decline, as in the UK, of the number of businesses started by Japanese nationals resident in Germany.

As for the Netherlands, there has been a quintupling of the number of business classified as “uncategorised” from 61 in 2015 to 393 in 2021. These may be brass plate type holding companies. All other categories (incorporated subsidiaries, branches of regional subsidiaries and joint ventures/investments) have increased as well, apart from branches of Japan HQ (which may have now become subsidiaries) and those started by Japanese nationals in the Netherlands. There was an overall rise of 86% of Japanese businesses in the Netherlands since 2015.

Cars for cheese?

The number of Japanese companies in France only increased by 3% since 2015, but this conceals significant changes in the composition of those businesses – the number of branches of Japan HQ has dropped 45%, the number of incorporated subsidiaries has also fallen, by 31%, whereas there has been a significant increase in joint ventures and part investments, as well as businesses started by Japanese nationals in France. This is particularly marked since 2019, when the EU-Japan Economic Partnership agreement entered into force. Perhaps the “cars for cheese” deal encouraged Japanese nationals to set up food exporting businesses in France.

* Some notes on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs data: “Companies” include branches of the Japanese parent company, subsidiaries incorporated in Europe, branches of those subsidiaries, companies started overseas by Japanese nationals and joint ventures/investments of 10% or more equity stake. There is no detailed break down by type of organisation for 2018, when MoFA changed their methodology.

Top 30 Japanese Employers in Italy 2022

The 30 largest Japanese company groups in Italy employ around 30,000 people across 85 companies in 2022, a 4% increase on 2021. This represents around two-thirds of the total number employed by Japanese companies in Italy.

Some of this growth was driven by acquisition – for example the Hitachi group of companies (the second largest Japanese employer in Italy) now includes Hitachi Energy, as a result of Hitachi’s acquisition of ABB’s power grids business. Yamaha Motor has also acquired Motori Minarelli.

The workforce of the largest Japanese employer in Italy, the NTT group of companies, has grown organically by 5.75% and Toyota Industries/Toyota Material Handling also has grown substantially.

Automotive related companies such as Denso, AGC and NSG (the latter two making automotive glass) have shrunk slightly but tyre manufacturer Bridgestone has grown. Other manufacturers such as Princes (foods company owned by Mitsubishi Corporation) and Ebara Pumps have cut back their workforce.

The top 30 company groups can be downloaded for free below. We can provide more detail on the 85 companies within the Top 30 – each company name in full and employee total per company (a truer indicator of size of the company than turnover in our opinion) for £9.99 – please email us for a PayPal invoice.

DOWNLOAD FREE PDF OF TOP 30 LARGEST JAPANESE EMPLOYERS IN ITALY

Top 30 Japanese Employers in Germany – 2022

The latest top 30 Japanese employers for Germany (download available below) show that even in manufacturing centric Germany, services are beginning to dominate. Outsourcing, a recruitment and staffing company are now the largest Japanese company in Germany, replacing Sumitomo Electric Industries, thanks to their acquisition of Orizon in 2017.

We have shifted Sumitomo Electric Industries from the top spot to #23 – not because they have laid a large number of people off, but because we suspect that previous data regarding employee numbers contained a large proportion who were working in SEI factories outside of Germany. We have had similar issues with the data for Panasonic and LIXIL.

NTT has risen from #3 to #2 although it seems to have shed a few employees – conversely, Fujitsu has dropped from #2 to #4 as the consequences of closing the factory in Augsburg and other restructuring have fed through. DMG Mori may have expanded by over a third (but this could be double counting problems again, as there are around 20 DMG Mori subsidiaries in Germany), and is now the third largest Japanese employer in Germany, with 5,800 employees.

There is an increasing issue with disclosure and therefore verifying employee numbers – particularly with companies like Sony who have restructured their European organisation so that many of their subsidiaries are branches. We’ve put Sony at #30, with 1000 employees, but it probably has more than that.

Hitachi has grown by over 1,000 employees due to the acquisition of the power grids business from ABB, now renamed Hitachi Energy and is the 8th biggest Japanese employer in Germany as a result.

The Top 30 largest Japanese company groupings in Germany can be downloaded for free below. If you would like more detail on the 206 companies included in the top 30 company groups of employers, each with full company name and employee number, for £9.99/€12, please contact us.

FREE PDF DOWNLOAD OF TOP 30 JAPANESE EMPLOYERS IN GERMANY 2022

Last updated by Pernille Rudlin at 2023-01-17.

Japanese business in Europe

Category: Japanese business in Europe