Acquiring NDS, SYSKEN and Hokuriku Telecom Construction together (2018)

The integration that erased no names

It is hard to read this only as expansion driven by the buyer. Ten telecom contractors announced integrations in the same short window as if by arrangement, and the pairings matched joint ventures formed two years earlier. When the trade press wrote at the time that some force was evidently at work, it meant that consolidation made NTT's own procurement more efficient. As long as construction margins were protected by the client's cost management, few of the contractors had the option of standing outside the current.

The execution, though, was the buyer's design. No cash was used: ¥10.3bn of treasury stock and ¥8.0bn of capital surplus took in three companies, ¥5,159m of negative goodwill was booked, and consolidated headcount rose by 5,119 in a single year. And the names of the companies that joined in October 2018 still stand as NDS, SYSKEN and Hokuriku Telecom Construction in the annual report dated 31 March 2025. Seven years on, not one company name has been erased by merger.