Buying Sweden’s BT Industries for the world lead in industrial vehicles (2000)

Buying the overseas leader to defend your own lead

The heart of this acquisition was that, to defend at world scale the top position it had built at home, it chose not organic growth but taking in the local leader. Even as world number one by units produced, it could not match the local BT in European sales networks or in the lineup of small indoor machines. Instead of taking years to break into Europe, by embracing a company strong there whole, Toyoda Automatic Loom Works lifted its world share of industrial materials-handling equipment from 13% to 21% in a single step. The strength of Toyota Motor Sales’ channel, which worked at home, does not work abroad. This was a decision that filled that reality by buying the local leader whole.

The method of taking BT in while leaving its brand and European base intact became the template for later overseas M&A. On the footing of a world lead made sure in industrial vehicles, Toyota Industries went on to buy America’s Cascade and to invest in the logistics solutions that automate the whole warehouse. The flow of nurturing at home a pillar to replace the founding loom trade, and then widening that pillar to world scale through overseas M&A, comes clearly into view from this single move in 2000. To defend the lead, buy the world’s leader — a strategy only a company with thickly stacked capital could choose, and one that set the outline of Toyota Industries thereafter.