Refusing Third Point’s break-up demand; holding the group together (2019)

Can value be raised without splitting the company?

The heart of this decision was that, against an activist’s logic of splitting off a high-earning business to unlock its value, Sony answered both times by keeping it inside. In 2013 the target was entertainment; in 2019 it was semiconductors — opposite ends of the company. Yet Sony’s answer did not change. Rather than separate each business and let the market price it, it judged that having film, music, semiconductors and finance cooperate under one umbrella was worth more over the long run — and both the Hirai and Yoshida regimes turned back the break-up case on that single point. It acknowledged the market’s discount while declining to split the company to dissolve it.

So was the choice to stay integrated the right one? The Sony that refused separation became a ¥1-trillion-profit company, and image sensors remain a pillar of growth; the answer seems to be in. Yet the story does not close there. Sony would later part — on its own timing and terms — with several of the very assets Third Point had urged it to tidy up: it sold its Olympus shares and, in 2025, partially spun off and re-listed finance. Having once turned back the break-up case, it went on to decide for itself what to keep and what to release. Sony’s two refusals, one reads, did not settle the question of whether value can be raised while integrated so much as take it back into management’s own hands.