A decade spent halving ¥1.5 trillion of debt and fusing two organisations (2014)

What the rebuilding prepared for the decade after

Sojitz’s ten-year rebuilding was not a bold stroke but an accumulation of unglamorous work: paring debt and binding an organisation together. A merger hurried along by a bank compressed the balance sheet and the headcount before anyone had chosen which businesses to be in, and left the rift between the two predecessors as an after-effect. Under those unfavourable terms successive presidents put becoming lighter ahead of growing, and did not change direction even when growth investments turned into impairments. The judgements of a period that resists being told as a story of attack are what later gave Sojitz the strength to talk about a character of its own.

In retrospect this was as much a period of asking how two companies become one as of reducing debt. The organising principle — keep the functional businesses where the majors are not competing — was born of financial necessity and became the ground on which the “Sojitz-ness” differentiation was later built. If a decade of cutting under duress prepared the conditions for the next advance, then rebuilding and strategy were a single continuous thing. How to turn the aftermath of a merger into the next source of strength is a question shared by many companies made out of two.