2009年6月30日火曜日

NIDEC, to put salaries back to normal

NIDEC's President Nagamori is one my favorite manager in Japan.
He decided to terminate pay cuts of 1300 employees, although gradually, citing the recovery in co’s business. We have seen HDD-related components’ sales getting stronger such as Seagate’s guidance, which may have made NIDEC bullish than before.
I know there was a sell rating initiation on the street today, not related to this staff cost raise I suppose, but I believe that this is one of the best companies in Japan which should recover faster than its peers.

Regression? Less share buybacks and cross-shareholdings.

Yesterday's evening Nikkei reported that many companies are whether reducing or postponing their share buybacks.
Takeda 280bn (FY3/09)=>0(FY3/10), NTT Docomo 137=>0, Astellas 124=>smaller
Panasonic 72=>0, Toyota 70=>0, JR West 20=>0, Murata 15=0
Should be natural under this crisis, but we wish the tide to come back in the near future when the economy normalizes.
Another concern is the rise in cross shareholding ratio. Based on the Toyo Keizai data, the cross shareholding decreased from 1990 through 2005 but started to rise for three consecutive years...

'Tis a Season of Shareholders Meetings - with lots of reduced and foregone dividends

As a majority of Japanese companies have year end in March, June is the peak season of shareholders meetings (called Annual General Meeting or AGM in Japan).

Hit by the recession started from the U.S. sub-prime meltdown, about one in every three Japanese companies announced either reduced or no dividends.

This is in contrast to the last season, when many companies increased dividends while foregoing pay increase for employees. Japan's media was critical of these companies for "giving in to overseas (investors) pressure".

Nissan's shareholders meeting yesterday started with the French CEO, Carlos Ghosn, apologizing to shareholders for the loss of dividends. While lower compared to the US standard, total bonus of 2.5 billion yen (approx. $25 million) to ten directors of Nissan is much higher than an average of listed Japanese companies.

Also, this year the new anti acquisition poison pill was 10% less than last year, with the decline of foreign ownership.

2009年6月25日木曜日

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