Word: mitsui
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American automobile and consumer electronics companies have taken their lumps from Japanese competitors in recent years, and now it may be the turn of U.S. grain exporters. Since 1978 such gigantic Japanese trading houses as Mitsui & Co. (1981 sales: $70.8 billion), and Mitsubishi Corp. (1981 sales: $70.3 billion), have quietly bought some two dozen U.S. grain elevators to store crops for export, and now handle an estimated 10% of all American grain sales abroad...
...Japanese have grabbed this business away from traditional exporters like Cargill Inc. and Continental Grain Co. by using the high-volume, low-profit tactics that have made Japanese companies feared and formidable competitors in markets everywhere. Mitsui and Mitsubishi deny that they go further and deliberately incur losses, but U.S. traders insist that the companies in some cases do just that to expand their share of the market for American grain...
...Mitsui, whose U.S. grain trading units include Gulf Coast Grain, Inc. and United Grain Co., Inc., accelerated its drive into the U.S. market in 1978, buying eight grain elevators in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri and Tennessee for $10.5 million from financially ailing Cook Industries. Mitsui beat out seven competitors by agreeing to the deal in just 48 hours. A year later Mi-tsui's archrival, Mitsubishi's Agrex Inc., boosted its own U.S. grain-trade investment by buying out Koppel Inc., the company's American partner, thereby becoming sole owner of a giant export elevator in Long Beach...
...Japan, the deal has obvious attractions. The renewed opportunity in China means the possibility of more orders for a number of engineering and heavy-equipment manufacturers, such as Toyo Construction and Mitsui & Co. At the same time, the extra cost to the Japanese treasury will not be all that high...
...other Japanese firms, such as Japan Airlines and Mitsui Trust Bank, new employees eagerly submit to unusual initiations. One Tokyo retailing firm dispatched its group of newcomers for a midwinter swim on the northern island of Hokkaido to tone up their selfdiscipline. Matsushita workers, by contrast, are sent to a Zen Buddhist temple for three-day retreats. In most Japanese companies the new workers, their parents and other relatives attend a ceremony at which the president welcomes the newcomers to the firm...