Word: sumitomo
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Despite their reputation for invincibility, Japanese companies do not win every competitive battle they enter. After five years of effort, Sumitomo Electric Industries has captured only 1% of the U.S. market for optical fibers, the hair-thin glass strands used in high-capacity telecommunications. Now even that meager market share is endangered...
Last week a U.S. district court in Manhattan ruled that Sumitomo violated U.S. patent law by copying too closely the designs of products made by Corning Glass Works, the company that developed the first commercially useful communications fibers in 1970. The court enjoined Sumitomo from making and selling in the U.S. any more fibers based on Corning's designs, and will award financial damages to the American company within a few weeks. Sumitomo says it is considering an appeal...
...spread around the world. That has given enormous muscle to Japan's financial institutions. Four of the world's top securities firms and seven of the ten largest commercial banks are now Japanese, and they are moving in a big way onto the American monetary scene. Last year Sumitomo Bank paid $500 million for 12.5% of the Goldman, Sachs investment firm. In March Nippon Life Insurance bought 13% of the Shearson Lehman Bros. brokerage house for $538 million. Just last week ailing BankAmerica confirmed it will sell $350 million worth of securities to Japanese financial companies...
...Citicorp (assets: $196 billion) and Merrill Lynch ($53 billion), openly aim to grab a large share of the U.S. financial marketplace. They have established a major beachhead in California, where four of the top ten banks are now Japanese owned: California First Bank, Sanwa Bank, Bank of California and Sumitomo Bank of California. On Wall Street, Japan's Sumitomo Bank shelled out $500 million for a 12.5% share of profits in the Goldman, Sachs investment-banking firm, while Nippon Life Insurance paid $538 million for a 13% slice of Shearson Lehman...
...shelled out $94 million, or about $1,000 per square foot, for the Tiffany building on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. Nissei Realty turned over an estimated $135 million last November for a half share of San Francisco's 38-story Crocker Bank Tower and Galleria shopping center. In December, Sumitomo Life Insurance agreed to pay $145 million, or about $330 per rentable square foot, for an office building under construction in Los Angeles...