The capital and business alliance with Hitachi Capital (2016)

A minority stake as the entrance

A 4.2% stake is light for an alliance between operating companies. The weight of the capital was carried by Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group’s 23.0%, and Mitsubishi UFJ Lease entered in the position of a business partner. That lightness can be read as a mismatch of tempo — the speed at which Hitachi was withdrawing from finance against the speed at which the two lessors were taking each other’s measure. A year after the alliance, indeed, neither president could point to a concrete joint deal.

That it nonetheless reached a merger four years later was not because the market stood still while they waited. Domestic leasing kept shrinking and the road to building assets alone grew narrower. The clause in the 2016 documents describing a business combination as “one option” looks like a reservation that decides nothing for now, while in substance closing off the option of pairing with anyone else. An integration across the old group boundaries took the form of waiting for conditions to align — but had roughly determined its destination at the entrance.