Selling the listed subsidiaries and dismantling the parent-child listing structure (2022)

From “holding” to “swapping”

The core of this decision is seen to lie less in the skill of selling each subsidiary than in removing the very premise that treats the group as a bundle of assets to hold for the long term. For Hitachi the listed subsidiaries were, for sixty years, the wisdom that reconciled control with the capital markets, and at the same time the backing for its self-image as a general-electric maker. The work of unbinding that bundle was inseparable from redrawing the blueprint of how it earns. That it let go even of materials and logistics, heavy with the colour of the founding trade, reveals a stance that keeps no sanctuary.

What remains is the question of whether there is value in continuing to hold a business, or value in swapping it out each time. Hitachi has swung toward the side that moves its portfolio nimbly, trying to turn that speed into competitiveness. Yet how a management that makes buying and selling normal operation squares with the settled accumulation of technology and the raising of people is something the coming numbers will answer. What shape of group Hitachi will choose beyond having unbound a sixty-year structure remains an open question.