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Mitsubishi Corporation

Mitsubishi Corporation – Story of the Largest Trading Company in Japan Providing a Variety of Services.

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Mitsubishi Corporation is the largest multinational Japanese trading company and also a member of the Mitsubishi Group. The company, Mitsubishi Corporation has ten different business segments to date and approximately employs 86,000 people worldwide. The main services provided by the company are energy, metal, food, consumer goods, financial services, construction, chemical, and machinery. Mitsubishi’s current headquarters are based in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan and it has a subsidiary, Lawson Inc which is a chain of convenience store franchises. So, let’s have a look at the history of the company and its predecessor.

History of Mitsubishi Corporation

The foundation of the Mitsubishi Corporation originally dates back to the time when Yataro Iwasaki founded Mitsubishi Group and eventually expanded the business. Yataro Iwasaki didn’t originally build the company but his responsibilities in the Tosa clan’s trading operation eventually made him the head of the business. The story of Mitsubishi dates back to the time when Iwasaki was employed by the Tosa clan and got his posting in Nagasaki. After he started working in the trading sector of Tsukumo Shokai, the company’s name was changed to Mitsukawa Shokai followed by Mitsubishi Shokai. In the early 1870s, the company’s name again changed to Mitsubishi Steamship Company which received government sponsorship to start a mail service between Yokohama and Shanghai.

Iwasaki, after working for a few years in the company, started to lead it in the late 1800s. His main goal was to diversify the business and thus entered the insurance, mining, and shipbuilding sector. In 1885, the unfortunate event of Iwasaki’s death took place and the responsibility of the company fell on the shoulders of Yanosuke Iwasaki, his successor. The new leader wanted to focus more on the coal and mining business and thus decided to merge the shipbuilding business with Nippon Yusen Kaisha, a rival company. In 1918, the international trading business of Mitsubishi formed another company, Mitsubishi Shoji Kaisha. Mitsubishi played a very active role during World War II as the company’s heavy industry sector was responsible for producing ships, aircraft, and heavy machinery.

Mitsubishi Corporation
Image source: www.etcapital.com

Dissolution of the Company

After the end of World War II, the Allied Occupation of Japan wanted the dissolution of all existing zaibatsu (large conglomerates who had significant dominating power in the Japanese economic market). Mitsubishi was one of those zaibatsu and though the company showed resistance initially, the rules were eventually implemented. The dissolution eventually took place in 1947 and Mitsubishi Shoji got rebranded into 100 different companies. But, after three years the re-consolidation was possible and Mitsubishi once again coalesced into three companies. This merger was finally completed in 1954 and it represents the present-day Mitsubishi Corporation. The company eventually listed itself in Tokyo Stock Exchange and Osaka Stock Exchange. By 1960, Mitsubishi had over fifty international offices and also established a US subsidiary, Mitsubishi International Corporation.

Two subsidiaries of Mitsubishi Corporation along with Mitsubishi Corporation became very prominent in Japan during the post-war scenario. Those two subsidiaries are Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Mitsubishi Motor Company. In the late 1960s, Mitsubishi became the largest general trading company in Japan and eventually stepped out to acquire a lot of international companies and together formed Mitsubishi Group. Last year, a company called Berkshire Hathaway acquired 5 percent stock in Mitsubishi Corporation along with a few other Japanese trading houses.

About Mitsubishi Group

The history of Mitsubishi Group and Mitsubishi Corporation dates back to the same time as Yataro Iwasaki is the founder of both of these businesses. Dissolution of the company followed by re-consolidation has kept the brand name of Mitsubishi intact and one of the best in its sector. Mitsubishi Corporation is one of the four companies under the Mitsubishi Group. The other three being MUFG Bank, Mitsubishi Electric, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. MUFG Bank became the largest bank in Japan after it merged with the Bank of Tokyo and UFJ Holdings. The business of Mitsubishi Group is massive as there are more than these four main companies under the shadow of Mitsubishi Group.

About the Founder

Iwasaki Yataro was one of the most successful industrialists and financiers of Japan. Iwasaki’s exposure to modernization and scope in the industry was possible when he became an employee of the Tosa clan. Seeing his contributions in diversifying the business of Mitsubishi, he was contracted by the Japanese government during World War II to send supplies. Iwasaki’s demise was due to stomach cancer in 1885.

Siemens

Siemens – Story of the Largest European Industrial Manufacturing Company.

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Siemens AG is a German-based publicly traded company based in Munich. The company was founded more than 170 years ago when Germany was still famous as the Kingdom of Prussia. Werner von Siemens is the founder of the company who incorporated the business in late 1847 along with Johann Georg Halske. Siemens today represents a wide range of products and services and its principal divisions are industry, energy, healthcare, and infrastructure, and cities. The products of the Company are very diverse ranging from developing enterprise software to railway vehicles. The company is a multinational company that provides its service globally and currently employs 293,000 people. Currently, the CEO of the company is Roland Busch and its headquarters is based in Munich.

The Initial Journey of Siemens

Werner von Siemens and Johann Georg Halske co-founded Siemens & Halske in October 1847. Their business evolved around an invention that used a needle instead of morse code to point the sequence of alphabets. The company was then known as Telegraph-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske and they opened their first long-distance telegraph line in 1848. This construction took place in Europe and covered a total length of 500km. Starting in 1850, the company started expanding its business in London and also developed long-distance telegraph lines in Russia. In 1867, Company successfully completed its Indo-European telegraph line from London to Calcutta. Werner retired from the company in 1890 and left the company’s responsibility to his brother and sons. After a couple of years, Company received a huge contract for the construction of the Hobart electric tramway in Australia.

Siemens
Image source: www.jobriya.in

Siemens During Nazi Germany

In the 20th century, several activities of the company Siemens & Halske were merged with Schuckert & Co Nuremberg and the company’s name changed to Siemens-Schuckert. After the merger, Siemens-Schuckert became the seventh-largest company in Germany in terms of the number of employees. In 1932, another merger took place between Siemens and the other two companies which formed the present-day Siemens AG. Since Siemens was a German company, it didn’t have a good reputation in how it treated the laborers in the extermination camps. The company had a plant in Auschwitz and the company was known for supplying electrical parts to these Nazi camps.

Expansion of the Company

From the 1950s, the company started manufacturing computers, semiconductors, pacemakers, and washing machines. In 1980, the company rolled out its first digital telephone exchange and also started acquiring several companies. Some of these companies include Plessey, a UK defense and technology company, three solar module plants from ARCO, Nixdorf Computer AG, Industrial Systems Division of Texas Instruments, and many more. The company also started a joint venture with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) which enhanced the business in the American market. In the late 1990s, Company opened its subsidiary, Siemens Financial Services for managing financial risks in the company. In 1998, the company made a big acquisition of $1.5 billion when it bought Westinghouse Power Generation and became a pioneer in the power generation market.

Company in Digital Era

In the 21st era, Company expanded its services and also started joint ventures with several companies. The company acquired the rail division of Invensys followed by LMS International NV in the same year. Nokia and Siemens started a joint venture and started Nokia Siemens Network but in 2013 the partnership came to an end when Nokia proposed a buy-out and acquired the entire Nokia Siemens Network. The same year, Company landed a huge deal with a middle east company called Saudi Aramco for manufacturing power plant components. The company also acquired the gas turbine and compressor energy business of Rolls Royce in 2014. Recently, Siemens Energy became an independent company and is not a part of SiemensAG anymore. The company is currently making efforts to expand its Healthline division and is planning to buy Varian Medical Systems for $16.4 billion.

About the Founder

Werner von Siemens, famous as the founder of SiemensAG was an electrical engineer and an industrialist by profession. His contribution in the field was so immense that his name was taken for the unit of electrical conductance. He completed his education at Prussian Military Academy’s School of Artillery and Engineering. After returning from the war, he devoured himself towards technology and soon invented the telegraph as the replacement of the morse code. He died on 6th December 1982.

Sanyo Electric

Sanyo Electric – Story of a Japanese Company Which has Become a Subsidiary of Panasonic.

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The foundation story of Sanyo Electric dates back to the late 1940s when Toshio Lue started his entrepreneurial journey. Sanyo Electric was officially launched in 1949 and its headquarters were based in Moriguchi, Osaka, Japan. In 2009, the company became a subsidiary of Panasonic when the latter acquired a 50.2 percent stake in Sanyo. Currently, the company operates under Panasonic and it is flourishing in the electronics industry. Some of the main products sold by the company are dry batteries, cellular phones, and consumer electronics. When the company was independent it had more than 230 subsidiaries and was a member of Fortune Global 500.

Origin of Sanyo Electric

Toshio Lue, before founding Sanyo Electric, was an employee at Matsushita (now Panasonic Corporation). He was the brother-in-law of the founder of Matsushita and he started building his business in an unused company plant lent to him. He started working for his start-up in 1947 and finally incorporated it after two years. In 1952, Sanyo Electric made the first plastic radio of Japan, and then in 1954 rolled out the nation’s first pulsator type washing machine. Being the first company to launch new electric appliances in the nation got Sanyo on the radar.

From the early 1970s, the company eventually planned to expand overseas and entered the American market. The demand for Sanyo’s products increased in the North American market when it started selling a vast range of consumer electronics like car stereos and home audio equipment. Sanyo started marketing extensively through television-based advertising. The expansion of Sanyo in the American market was possible because of Howard Ladd who became Executive Vice President and COO of the company in 1969.

Sanyo Electric
Image source: wikimedia.org

Expansion of Business

Under the leadership of Ladd, Sanyo didn’t just expand geographically but also started acquiring many companies and bringing more diversity. In 1977, Sanyo Electric decided to buy Fisher Electronics and completed the acquisition in the same year. Fisher became a subsidiary of Sanyo Electric and also turned into a million-dollar company in the sphere of consumer electronics. After the merger of Fisher Corporation of Sanyo, Ladd was made the CEO of the company and he remained the same till 1987.

In 1976, the company bought the television business of Whirlpool Corporation to make its presence more vivid in North America. But before that, the company suffered a bit of damage in the video sector. This happened because the company’s decision to use Sony’s Betamax VCR format didn’t turn out to be much profitable. Sanyo also acquired Warwick Electronics in 1976 which was known for television manufacturing. In the 1980s, the company also started selling personal computers but it lacked compatibility and hence disappeared from the market very soon. A merger between Fisher and Sanyo’s US affiliate took place in 1986 which made the company much more efficient but at the same time, some of the key executives of the company including Ladd quit Sanyo.

Acquisitions of Sanyo

The company suffered tremendous losses when it was hit by the Chuetsu earthquake in 2004. After a year, financial results showed that the company suffered a loss of 205 billion yen due to the earthquake. This called for a restructuring plan for Sanyo but the profits made by the company were insignificant as compared to the massive loss. In 2006, the company announced that the losses continued which led to several lay-offs. Eventually, the mobile phone division of the company was acquired by Kyocera, a ceramics and electronics manufacturer. In November 2008, Panasonic and Sanyo started discussing the buy-out agreement and after a year, Panasonic successfully acquired a majority stake in Sanyo and made it one of its subsidiaries. In 2010, Panasonic acquired the remaining shares in the company and decided the brand name of Sanyo will be terminated. But today there are still some electronics where the brand name of Sanyo is valuable.

About the Founder

Toshio Lue, before becoming the founder of Sanyo Electric, worked at Matsushita Electric Work in a growth and development role. Prior to that, Lue served in the Japanese military but stepped down after Japan’s defeat in World War II. After he resigned from Matsushita, he founded Sanyo Electric and he named his firm Sanyo because it meant “three oceans” in Japan. And, Lue’s goal was to expand Sanyo across Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans.

Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo – A Multinational Financial Conglomerate With Assets Worth $1.9 Trillion.

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William Fargo and Henry Wells co-founded Wells Fargo & Co, in 1852. Today, Wells Fargo & Company is one of the biggest financial service companies in the entire world. The corporate headquarters of the company is based in San Francisco, California and the operational headquarters is based in Manhattan. Last year, the company ranked 30 among the Fortune 500 companies in terms of total revenue. Wells Fargo Bank, one of the subsidiaries of the company also ranks fourth among US banks in terms of total assets. The multinational company, we know today as Company was formed by the merger of the original company and Norwest Corporation back in 1998.

About the Company

From the 19th century till today, Company has created a highly reputed fame for itself. In 2014, the company was named the most valuable bank in the world and the next year it became the world’s largest bank by market capitalization. The company shares the title of “Big Four Banks” of the US along with Citigroup, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase. The company currently has around 70 million customers spread across 35 nations globally. There are more than 8,000 branches of the company and approximately 268,000 employees as of 2020. The company currently has four subsidiaries, namely, Wells Fargo Advisors, Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., Wells Fargo Rail, and Wells Fargo Securities. The main services provided by the company are community banking, consumer lending, student loan, equipment lending, asset management, securities, etc.

Wells Fargo
Image source: wikimedia.org

History of Wells Fargo

Henry Wells and William Fargo are the two founders of the company. Before they founded Company, they established the famous multinational company, American Express. So, both of them were experienced entrepreneurs which helped them become visionaries. The company was founded back in the 1800s to provide express and banking services in the state of California. Eventually, other subsidiaries of the company were established with an increase in the number of services.

In 1866, a major consolidation took place uniting Holladay and Overland Mail with Company. The banking and express operations of the company were separated from the main division as it merged with Nevada National Bank to form Wells Fargo Nevada National Bank in 1905. After this merger, the entity again merged with Union Trust Company in 1923 and it became Wells Fargo Bank. This is how the company gradually expanded its territory and established its prime subsidiaries.

Major Events and Acquisitions

After multiple mergers and forming new subsidiaries, Company started acquiring a series of companies in the 1980s. In 1986, the company acquired Crocker National Corporation, a US bank from Midland Bank followed by Bank of America which is a personal trust business. The company closed a giant deal in 1991 when it acquired 130 California branches from Great American Bank. In 1995, the company started offering internet banking and it became the first-ever big US financial company to provide this service. The company closed a deal for $11.6 billion when it acquired First Interstate Bancorp in 1996 which was the US’s eighth-largest banking company back then. In 1998, Norwest and Wells Fargo merged but the former decided to continue the business under the name.

After the merger, the company’s first acquisition was National Bank of Alaska followed by First Security Corporation, both in 2000. Some of the other companies were acquired by H.D. Vest Financial Services, Placer Sierra Bank, the construction unit of CIT, Century Bancshares of Texas, and many more. In 2008, Company decided to buy Wachovia for $14.8 billion. At the same time, Citigroup also offered to buy the same and threatened Company legally. But, the shareholders approved the deal with Wells Fargo as the company offered seven times more than Citigroup. The deal was closed in the same year. The company recently made Charles Scharf its new CEO in 2019.

The shareholders approved the deal with Wells Fargo as the company offered seven times more than Citigroup. The deal was closed in the same year. The company recently made Charles Scharf its new CEO in 2019.

Founder

William Fargo has a major contribution towards building the modern financial firms of America. William along with his business partner Henry Wells founded American Express Company and Wells Fargo. He started his career professionally when he got a job as a clerk in the forwarding house of Dunford & Co. In 1850, the American Express Company was founded by merging three companies and William was made its Secretary while Henry its President.

SK Telecom

SK Telecom – A Subsidiary of SK Group Providing Wireless Telecommunication Services in South Korea.

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Based in South Korea, SK Telecom operates under the SK Group which is one of the largest industrial conglomerates of the nation. The company is famous for being the largest wireless carrier of South Korea and had a local market share of 50.5 percent as of 2008. SK Telecom was established in 1984 as Korea Mobile Telecommunications and in 1997 it was rebranded as SK Telecom. The company has evolved with time from using the analog cellular system to IMT-cellular systems. From the wireless market, SK has also entered the landline market with the acquisition of Hanaro Telecom in 2008. Currently, the company has more than 40,000 employees and has expanded overseas especially to other Asian countries.

History of the SK Telecom

Established in early 1984, Korea Mobile Telecommunications Corp was a subsidiary of Korea Telecom (now known as KT Corp). In 1993, KT Corp decided to sell the subsidiary and thus it came under the SK Group a year later when it decided to buy Korea Mobile Telecommunications Corp. The company, KMTC, officially became a part of the SK Group in 1997 and changed its name to SK Telecom. Under the new parent company, SK Telecom became the second company in the world to launch commercial 3G services using the W-CDMA technology. Eventually, SK Telecom’s services offered higher speed data transmission than the other existing 2G networks.

When the privatization of KMTC took place in 1994, SK Group became the largest shareholder of the company. And, after the privatization, KTMC reached it’s one million subscribers mark within a year. In 1996, it was listed in the NYSE and during that time it was the third Korean company to get listed there. After KMTC became fully a part of the SK Group and changed its name, the merger made it the world’s sixth company to cross the ten million subscriber mark. In 1997, SK Telecom launched NetsGo, a new online service. The company started entering the international market during this time through the construction of the Northeast Asian CDMA belt. The company also entered the Mongolian market in 1998 when it cofounded Skytel LLC with 30 percent ownership.

SK Telecom
Image source: wikimedia.org

Market in the 21st Century

During the time period between 2001 to 2007, SK Telecom was involved in welcoming the cross-platform era integrated mobile services. The company started exploring new models to diversify the business through m-commerce or satellite DMB service. SK acquired Shinsegi Telecomm Inc in 2002 and deployed the IMT-2000 facility which was the world’s first. The company was also trying to strike deals with the international market leveraging CDMA and GSM networks. This helped the company enter into several markets including Israel, China, and Vietnam. In 2004, SK Telecom started a joint venture with China Unicom and named it UNISK and a few years later signed an agreement with the Chinese government for building their 3G wireless broadband equivalent.

New Technologies

With time the company evolved and adapted new technologies to survive and thrive in the telecommunications market. In 2008, the company acquired a controlling stake of Hanaro Telecom and it helped SK to expand in the landline market. SK started offering commercial LTE-Advanced Network and it became the world’s first operator to successfully do so. Apple also made some discussions with SK Telecom back in 2013 as the former decided to launch the iPhone 5s model on the company’s advanced LTE network. In 2019, the company also announced the launch of the world’s first 5G roaming service in partnership with Swisscom. Recently, the company has also partnered with Uber Technologies. Company not only introduced some advanced networking technologies for the first time in South Korea but also in the entire world.

Jung Ho Park – CEO of SK Telecom

Jung Ho Park is the current CEO of SK Telecom. He is currently looking out for long-time growth opportunities and building a strong corporate culture in the company. Previously, he served as the CEO of SK Hynix and after that served as the director of SK C&C Co. Jung Ho Park completed his education from George Washington University.

Control Data Corporation

Control Data Corporation – The Story of One of the Pioneers of Mainframe and Supercomputers.

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There have been cases where companies do exceptionally well and stand as a tough competitor for their rivals at a time, and when the time changes, it becomes difficult for them to keep up with the changing trends, and they fall bad. The same thing happened with CDC (Control Data Corporation), a company founded in 1957, termed as one of the pioneers of the mainframe and the supercomputers. In the beginning years of the company, it easily became a part of the top ten leading computer manufacturing companies in the US. But the changing technologies made the company suffer huge losses, and it had to close most of its operations.

Foundation of Control Data Corporation

A couple of software engineers from a team (later became a company named Sperry) that worked for the US military in World War II established Control Data Corporation in September 1957. The company started its operations from an old warehouse in Minneapolis. William Norris became the first CEO, and Seymour Cray was the first chief designer of the company.
With enough experience, CDC started to build and ship the subsystems, including drum memory systems. The next year, the company built its flagship product, the CDC Little Character, one of the most successful products of CDC. In the following years, CDC also built products for the US Navy. The company is also allegedly credited for building one of the first minicomputers, i.e. the CDC 160A, a 12-bit version of 1604. The CDC 160A was the first computer to have an architecture of a standard office desk.
CDC 3000 series was CDC’s next famous series of the 60s. During the mid-60s, Seymour Cray, Jim Thornton, and Dean Roush were already working on a new computer design separately to improve the CDC 1604 and bring a more compact design computer to the market. The result was CDC 6600, a ten times faster machine that brought about $8 million to the company profits, and over 100 machines were sold. The CDC 6600 brought much-needed fame to CDC, and IBM started to consider the former as its rival.

Control Data Corporation
Image source: wikimedia.org

During the same time, to grow and compete with companies like IBM, CDC started to acquire other small companies. As a result, CDC was now also developing peripheral products like tape transport. The peripheral lineup of CDC was making cheaper yet faster peripheral devices as compared to its rivals. CDC became one of the leading companies to supply hard disk drives through its Magnetic Peripheral Inc (Imprimis Technology) division. CDC is one among the three developers of the universal Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) interface along with Compaq and Western Digital.
In the 70s, CDC also entered into the OCR system development business to replace the punched card technology and acquired Rabinow Engineering (one of the pioneers of OCR technology). But later, CDC had to close that business.
The next products from CDC were CDC 7600 and CDC 8600, which were even faster, but could not reach the expectation. In 1975, CDC introduced the STAR-100, a supercomputer that had its name registered in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the “most powerful and fastest computer”.
During the late 70s, CDC was selling CDC 6600 and 7600 under its CDC Cyber lineup. The company’s other ambitious and successful projects were Cyber 205, CYBER PLUS, Cyber 80, etc.

The ‘Fall’, and Formation of Ceridian

The 80s was the most challenging decade for CDC. It was selling the machines but was unable to produce competitive designs as per the requirements. With the rise in competition, the company started to sell some of its business bit-by-bit, starting with PathLab Laboratory Information System in 1987, followed by VTC, Ticketron, and CDC in 1992. CDC was then left with its service business, which is renamed Ceridian, a company that is still operational.
Ceridian, today, is following its legacy and is working as one of the leaders in the field of IT outsourcing, mainly as a human resource company. Ceridian is active in five major countries, i.e., the USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, and Mauritius. It is a publicly traded company and has its headquarters based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

The Key People in the Formation of CDC

William Norris was the first CEO and one of the founders of CDC. He was born on 14 July 1911 in Red Cloud, Nebraska. He went to the University of Nebraska and started his career as an X-Ray equipment seller for the Westinghouse Corporation in Chicago.
Later, Norris joined the US Navy as a codebreaker and became the lieutenant commander in the next few years. After World War II ended, he along with Howard Engstrom and other US Navy cryptographers, formed the Engineering Research Associates (ERA) in January 1946, a division that worked for the US Navy. After multiple restructuring of ERA, Norris with a few other employees left the company and established Control Data Corporation in 1957. Norris was unanimously selected as the president and the first CEO of CDC.