Buying back Honeywell’s stake: the end of 49 years (2002)

It was the other side that said it wanted to sell

It was Honeywell that proposed the meeting in Hawaii, and what it put on the table was a wish to sell its shareholding. Yamatake’s work, one can say, was to translate its partner’s withdrawal into a redefinition of itself. President Ido Ichiro said the new relationship would make possible investment in new markets and new businesses, and above all the expansion of business in Asia — which, turned around, is also an admission that until then the way it could move in Asia had been bound by the frame of the alliance.

It took five years, however, to get from taking the sign down to settling the capital. Although the intention to sell was made public in October 1997, the process stalled twice on circumstances belonging to the other party and to the rules: restrictions on share buybacks, the fall in the share price after the consumption-tax increase, and AlliedSignal’s acquisition of Honeywell. Splitting the purchase between December 2000 and July 2002 was also the result of waiting for the legislation on treasury stock to be put in place. What decided how a forty-nine-year relationship ended was, to a large degree, the conjunction of law and market conditions rather than the strategies of either side.