Firing his own brother to return to the core trade (1988)

Disciplining his own kin while the business was thriving

The core of this dismissal was not a cleanup after results had turned down, but the fact that the founder moved against his own brother while the share price was still climbing. To cut off the temptation of chasing paper gains and return to the core business before financial engineering could eat it away entirely — this choice to remove a family member at the height of good times shows, in strong relief, the business outlook of Nobutsugu Shimizu, a merchant back from the black markets who held it an article of faith to earn by the sweat of one’s brow. In choosing the opposite course at a moment when many operating companies were giddy with investment gains, it was, for its time, an unusual decision.

This decision to put the continuity of the business above blood ties would later lead to the succession in which he sought no heir from the family and brought one in from Mitsubishi Corporation instead. The 1988 choice — that even a relative who harms the core business is to be removed — and the later policy of not letting the founding family inherit the company are two sides of the same outlook. How far can an owner-run company discipline its own kin? Shimizu’s decision offers one answer to that question.