Selling control of steering to a fund — and buying it back two years later (2025)

Borrow outside hands to fix it, take it back, then sell it on

Roughly ¥9bn of losses at the time of the sale had turned into ¥4.3bn of profit two years later. The same assets, the same products, the same customers — what changed the figures was that the majority shareholder changed and the business could negotiate its selling prices as an independent company. That reviews of procurement and pricing which had not moved while NSK held the business proceeded within two years of its leaving the consolidation is the heaviest fact in this round trip. The profitability of a business can be seen as determined not by the business alone but also by whose umbrella it sits under.

Bringing it back, however, is not a conclusion. The company has stated explicitly that even after the buy-back it has not changed its policy of seeking a strategic partner and carving the business out, and it projects a 3–4% operating margin for steering in FY2028. The gap against the 8–10% held out for the group as a whole remains, and so does the structure in which that target is unreachable while this business is carried. A joint venture with thyssenkrupp that did not come off, a fund’s hands borrowed, the business taken back and the next counterparty awaited — where the operation born in Maebashi in 1960 belongs is, even after a two-year round trip, still not settled.