Keeping the Mizuho alliance free of capital ties (2004)

Independence, and what it was traded for

Credit Saison’s independence can be described as a choice that traded the weakness of holding no capital for keeping in its own hands the freedom to choose its partners. The fifteen years with Mizuho, for all that the two were called allies, left a residue of frustration at meetings that never reached a conclusion — but they also preserved a mobility that could not have been kept from inside the group. The way of fighting that pursues the quality of affluent customers rather than sheer volume was likewise something only an independent company, unbound by the logic of capital, was free to choose.

Independence in itself, however, promises no result. With the profitability of card settlement in continuing decline, whether the comprehensive life-services group and the emerging-market expansion envisaged by chairman and CEO Hayashino Hiroshi can back the value of that independence with numbers is still to be seen. How the next generation of management inherits the idea of weaving an economic zone without binding it by capital will also help decide what that independence was worth.