Absorbing Fuji Electronics into a single operating company (2019)

The five and a half years before the equal sign came down

The 2015 joint share transfer appears to have been a form for acquiring the other side’s customer list, and the people who held it, without losing either. If so, this merger is the judgement of when to fold that form away. Fold it too early and the salespeople on the side that accepted the integration drift off, and the value acquired evaporates. Too late, and the group carries duplicated administration and two separate customer lists while missing the semiconductor upswing. In announcing the merger six months after taking the presidency and placing execution in October 2020, President Hara Kazumasa left traces of having looked at both sides.

What five and a half years meant is shown by the numbers that followed. Two years after the merger revenue passed ¥1 trillion, the supplier roster reached about 300 and customers about 18,000. Fuji Electronics disappeared as a legal entity in October 2020, and left the holding company’s trading name in August 2022 — eight years from the announcement of the integration in May 2014. The mid-sized and small customers that belonged to the name that vanished remain inside a single Macnica sales organization.