Lee Cheng-yong, executive director of Samsung Group, announced news that shocked all Japanese.
"Samsung Group has acquired 28% of Sharp Group's shares through market acquisition; Fairy Company also owns 39% of Sharp Group's shares. The specific share summary will be completed within three days. Together, our two companies,
We have controlled the vast majority of Sharp’s shares, and we will apply to the Sapporo Stock Exchange, Nagoya Stock Exchange and Fukuoka Stock Exchange to privatize the Sharp Group!”
"boom……"
Everyone who heard the news was stunned.
Whether you are a so-called financial person or not, whether you are a professional in the electronics industry or not, you are of course extremely shocked when you suddenly hear the news that Sharp, one of the prides of Japan, is controlled by foreigners and is going to be privatized!
Several major TV stations in Japan, except for the most bizarre Tokyo TV, immediately stopped broadcasting other programs and broadcast the entire "Sharp privatization incident".
Sharp is a long-established Japanese electronics company. It can also be said that in the 1900s, in the field of consumer electronics, their brilliance was not inferior to that of Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba and Hitachi. In many cases, they were the only ones on par with Sony.
Especially the LCD TVs produced after 2000 were even more popular. Until Xiao Qi's reincarnation, they were still the mainstream in the world.
But unfortunately, at the same time when Xiao Qi was reincarnated, Sharp had already fallen into a quagmire and was on the verge of bankruptcy several times.
It is also very emotional to say that although they are the inventors of LCD TV, they have suffered huge losses in LCD. To the point that the amount of losses exceeds the value of the company, which is really emotional.
But if you carefully analyze Sharp's decline process, you will feel that Sharp is actually torturing himself and making himself what he is now, and he can't blame others at all.
In fact, it's not just Sharp. Sharp's self-torture can also be extended to Sony, Toshiba, Hitachi and other Japanese electronics manufacturers. They all look the same.
Take Sharp for example.
It was Sharp who was the first to invent the LCD TV, and it achieved great success all of a sudden. Within a year or two, Sharp gained a huge market and huge profits by relying on its high-precision LCD TV products.
But a company cannot occupy a market forever. There will always be pursuers joining in to seize market share.
The same goes for LCD TVs. As people are no longer satisfied with high-priced large LCD TVs, and as Samsung, LG, Baodao and other manufacturers continue to get involved in the LCD panel industry, Sharp's advantage suddenly becomes very weak.
It's not that Sharp's technology has lagged behind. In fact, Sharp's technology has always been the most advanced. Even when they went bankrupt, Sharp was the only company in the world that had the tenth-generation LCD technology production line.
It's just that Sharp's philosophy is lagging behind.
They watch manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, Baodao, etc. continue to occupy the mid- to low-end market share, and they are unwilling to put down their pride and compete with other manufacturers in the mid-to-low-end market.
It just so happens that they are still No. 1 in high-end, so Sharp made the most wrong decision.
Sharp decided to abandon the mid-to-low-end market and extend its LCD products to the high-end market to meet the needs of high-end customers in Japan, South Korea, Europe and the United States.
So, they accumulated liquid crystal technology again and again and made good liquid crystal products again and again.
But it turns out that Sharp's actions, on the one hand, occupy a large amount of R&D funds, and on the other hand, they have to pursue high profits in order to be able to afford the expensive manpower and material resources they spend.
As a result, Sharp's high-end LCD TVs will no longer be cheap.
Users in Europe, America, Japan and South Korea do not care about the quality of TV sets as much as Sharp imagined, and do not buy high-end LCD TVs at all.
For the same LCD TV, I can buy a 50-inch Samsung TV for just over 12,000 yuan and a Sharp one for over 18,000 yuan. How big is the difference in viewing effect? I don’t watch movies at home every day!
On the other hand, whether it is Samsung, LG, or Baodao's LCD panel manufacturers, they all have to sell their own LCD panels to downstream TV manufacturers, which is also a big part of their profits.
But Sharp is not like this. The LCD screens they produce are only for their own use. Even if others want to buy Sharp's LCD panels, they will not give them to them, for fear that after others use Sharp's LCD screens, they will damage their own.
Sharp LCD TV creates competitive impact.
However, even if others are not using their LCD screens, Sharp's LCD TV market share is now steadily losing ground.
At its peak, Sharp's LCD TVs occupied one-third of the market in Japan and South Korea, one-third of the market in Europe and the United States, and one-quarter of the market in China, but now they have fallen to half of the previous market.
Coupled with the high annual research and development expenses, Sharp has fallen into serious losses in the past few years.
Since the end of last year, the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States has greatly hit Japan's export market, which has also caused Japan's stock market to continue to fall. Electronic manufacturers have also suffered heavy losses, and Sharp's stock has not been able to escape the fate of continuing to fall.
However, Sharp is really stubborn. Even though it has suffered a lot of blows, it not only adheres to their high-end line, but also just this year, the tenth-generation LCD panel production line that put Sharp in trouble was launched as scheduled.
You may not know what the tenth generation LCD panel production line is, but if I tell you that Samsung, LG and other manufacturers were only using the 85th generation in 2013, then you can know that they will be launched in 2009.
How advanced is the tenth generation LCD panel production line?
However, the problem is still there. No matter how good your product is, if no one buys it, there is nothing you can do about it!
The tenth-generation LCD panel production line has suddenly lowered its profit margin from 30% in the eighth generation to about 8%. This means that it must maintain an operating rate of 80% to make money.
But from the very beginning, Sharp's production line only accounted for 60% of the total. When the European debt crisis broke out in September, it hit 40%. This tenth-generation production line was a hot potato.
No!
Under such circumstances, Xiao Qi and Li Jianxi made great progress in their acquisition of Sharp Corporation.
In August last year, when he went to the capital to watch the Olympic Games, Li Jianxi discussed with Xiao Qi the acquisition of shares in Sharp Corporation, thereby controlling Sharp and acquiring various advanced technologies from Sharp.
Li Jianxi is looking for UBS, and Xiao Qi is looking for Citibank.
Because the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States broke out and affected the Japanese stock market, the two giants helped them acquire shares in Sharp Corporation, which went relatively smoothly from the beginning.
By April this year, Li Jianxi had bought enough of the 15% shares he had agreed to initially, but Citibank suggested that Xiao Qi continue to absorb shares in Sharp Corporation in order to achieve absolute control.
Otherwise, Sharp’s technology is really hard to come by.
Xiao Qi later discussed with Li Jianxi, and Li Jianxi agreed to increase his shares to 28%, which is the same share as the Takahashi family, while Xiao Qi was prepared to buy 39% of the shares, which would reach 67%
, completely forming an absolute holding.
Except for Xiao Qi, everyone thinks that this will be a long process, because to acquire so many stocks requires more patience and opportunities.
Unexpectedly, in September, with the outbreak of the Greek debt crisis, the Japanese stock market was hit hard again. Sharp's stock price continued to plummet. By mid-September, it was only 17 billion US dollars. Compared with the same period last year, it had almost plummeted.
A third of it!
Seeing such a good opportunity, UBS Group and Citibank immediately took action and skillfully operated on the Japanese stock market. By continuously suppressing and increasing the stock price, under repeated shocks, by mid-October, Sharp's stock price had been suppressed to
About 12.8 billion US dollars.
With such a continuous plunge, many people who held Sharp shares could no longer hold on any longer and sold their shares one after another, thereby being absorbed by UBS Group and Citibank.
Due to the recent poor stock market conditions in Japan, many financial giants are making trouble there, and coupled with the rich experience of UBS Group and Citibank, Sharp's stock fluctuations have not attracted many people's attention.
Now, it was suddenly announced by Samsung that it had jointly controlled it with Fairy Company and was preparing to privatize Sharp. The Japanese people first expressed their disapproval.
“It’s really unimaginable that Sharp, a brand our family has been using for decades, was actually bought by a foreigner?”
"Although Samsung and Fairy are both good companies, we still hope that Sharp will be the Japanese Sharp!"
"Wow, the methods of Samsung and Fairy Company are really powerful! But looking at this privatization, I feel that it must be the method of Xiao Qi, a greedy and stingy man. He has used this trick many times in Europe and the United States! Samsung has on the contrary
No!"
"Yes! Is Xiao Qi's magic hand finally reaching out to Japan? Now it's Sharp, will the next step be Sony, Toshiba, and Hitachi?"
"I knew the Chinese had ambitions towards Japan. They were prepared to control our economy first, and then control our lives!"
"Resolutely oppose Sharp's privatization. Japanese entrepreneurs, facing the two giants Li Jianxi and Xiao Qi, it's time to show your courage and ability!!"
"..."
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