Integrating with Mitsumi Electric as equals (2016)

The acquisition king who did not discard the other name

What is implied in this integration is that a company known as the original acquisition king chose not a takeover but a merger of equals that preserved the other side’s name. Judged by a pattern of expansion that had absorbed 33 companies in 45 years, simply taking Mitsumi Electric in as a subsidiary would have been perfectly coherent. That it renamed itself Minebea Mitsumi instead can be read two ways at once — as a practical judgement that form should not be allowed to slow the integration down, and as an intent to win over the other company’s engineers and shop floors. The initial split in opinion over whether this was a rescue or a union of equals can be seen to have receded into the background as results improved.

In a world of electronic components where the tide runs strongly towards “selection and concentration” — narrowing the range of businesses — Minebea Mitsumi went the other way, adding complementary technologies together in pursuit of scale. One reason the integration produced results so quickly appears to lie in the ten-month run-up that built a sense of common purpose before the deal closed. Still, a strategy of “buying time” through M&A lives or dies on whether the acquired shop floor actually moves. How far can expansion by taking in one company after another continue to cohere as a single corporate culture — that question remains open in the process by which an integration undertaken for survival turns into a template for growth.