Acquiring American Standard’s North American business and GROHE (2013)
A deft vessel and a heavy content
The financial design of the two acquisitions stands out. Against GROHE’s ¥380 billion including debt, LIXIL’s own outlay was only ¥99.2 billion, with ¥160 billion of existing borrowings moved to non-recourse loans; splitting the voting rights with the Development Bank of Japan also deferred the weight of consolidation. True to Fujimori’s line that one cannot miss the moment a business is up for sale, this was a design that put time first and diluted the price of doing so with financial technique.
Yet lightening the vessel did not change the weight of what was in it. The accounting fraud at Joyou, the listed subsidiary that came with GROHE, surfaced as an expected loss of roughly ¥25 billion in share value and up to ¥16 billion in debt guarantees, and reached about ¥66 billion in total. How much was visible in pre-acquisition due diligence cannot be judged from outside. The speed to seize an opportunity while it is on the market and the time to establish what one is buying may be hard to hold together under the same manager.
Revenue and net margin, FY2008–FY2018
Revenue in ¥ bn (bars) and net margin in % (line), for the years around the decision. Shaded columns are FY2013 onwards — after it was taken.
Source: securities reports
Read the full dossier in Japanese →
The Japanese edition carries the complete record of this decision — the situation that forced it, the options weighed, what actually followed, and the sources behind every claim.
Other key decisions at LIXIL
Yen amounts are converted at the average rate of each figure’s own year — not today’s rate; the revenue chart is shown in yen. Exchange rates & sources — the full ¥/US$ table →
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