Splitting off the drug business to become a pure holding company (2009)

The year the merger failed, it folded inward instead

The 2009 reorganization was the work left over after the ¥4-trillion combination announced the previous year had evaporated. The arithmetic by which the first- and second-largest firms, joined together, would need only half the facilities came apart on an external matter: review by the Fair Trade Commission. What was carried out instead was the reduction of the number of legal entities that had accumulated inside the group over nine years. The 1st of October, when names such as Chiaki Yakuhin and Izutsu Kuraya Sanseido disappeared, marks the end of the era in which the national network had been filled in by acquisition.

The move to a pure holding company is also a decision that is hard to see from outside. Sales and headcount vanish from the parent’s figures, and the continuity of the securities filings is broken once. Even so, by moving purchasing, logistics and systems down into the operating company, responsibility for pricing and for inventory was gathered into one firm. Watanabe Shuichi, who became Mediceo’s first president, moved up to the presidency of Medipal three years later and held it for thirteen years, until he disclosed his illness in May 2025.