Buying Meteor’s sealing assets in Europe — and exiting five years later (2014)

Buying customers, and being chosen by them

What this transaction demonstrated is that being world-class in a product and being able to sell that product under a different set of commercial customs are two different things. A company with high standards in weatherstrip design and production took on a German company making the same product — on overlapping technology alone an unforced combination, and it even chose the cautious route of an asset purchase. The European business struggled nonetheless. What could be bought went as far as plants, people and a customer list; the reason a local automaker would entrust work to a Japanese keiretsu supplier was not among the assets.

The manner of the exit says something about this company. It did not defer the loss: it transferred the business to a fund without receiving cash and took ¥21.6bn in a single period. The LED business was heading for contraction at the same time, and from the 2025 Business Plan of 2018 onward the criterion of judgement shifted from adding geographies to the profitability of existing businesses. That the 2025 acquisition of Ashimori Industry filled an adjacent product area rather than an adjacent region lies on the same line. These five years taught, in fairly concrete terms, what an acquisition can and cannot buy.