Spinning off LUXA and selling it to KDDI (2015)

What it means to fold a business that sits off the map

To read this sale only as tidying away a venture that sat outside the core business is to see half of it. Murata had grown LUXA to some 200 people in four years, and a listing was in view. The heart of the decision lies in choosing not to push it all the way alone but to hand it to KDDI, where it fitted better. Judging where to let go of a business you have raised, and turning the proceeds toward the decisive fight in your own trade — BizReach performed that act of resource allocation once, very early in its life.

That said, it can be called elegant capital allocation only because we know the growth that followed. At the moment of sale LUXA was a 200-person business with a listing in sight, and continuing to grow it was a real alternative. Murata, who had led it, moved into the KDDI group and only later returned as COO — a detour. Paying the cost of putting a business and its people outside the company in order to concentrate on the core is not something the size of the sale proceeds alone can measure.