Keiretsu - Nature of The Keiretsu

Nature of The Keiretsu

At the epicenter, the "big six" keiretsu is a bank and a trading company(sogo shosha). Japanese banks are allowed to have equity in other firms with a quota of less than 5% of the total number of shares issued by the company (Anti-Monopoly Law Reform of 1977). Banks play a crucial role in the smooth functioning of this organization. They assess the investment projects and provide loans when required. The trading companies(sogo sosha) deal in imports and exports of an assorted range of commodities throughout the world. Each major company has its own "President's Club", enabling interaction of core members to better help decide their strategies.

The Japanese keiretsu took various preventive measures to avoid takeovers from foreign companies. One of them was "interlocking" or "cross-holding" of shares. This method was established by Article 280 of Commerce Law. By doing so, each company held a stake in the other's company. This helped reduce the pressure on management to achieve short-term goals at the expense of long-term growth. Besides that, interlocking of shares serves as a tool for monitoring and disciplining the group's firms. The level of group orientation or strength between the member companies is determined by the "interlocking shares ratio" (the ratio of shares owned by other group firms to total shares issued) and the "intragroup loans ratio" (the ratio of loans received from financial institutions in the group to total loans received).

Industries such as banking, insurance, steel, trading, manufacturing, electric, gas and chemicals are all part of the horizontal keiretsu web. The member companies follow the "One-Set Policy" whereby the groups avoid direct competition between member firms.

The One-Set Policy:

In the 1920s, government officials maintained close relations with the zaibatsu, and the roots of their influence still hold strong. The keiretsu have great influence on Japanese industrial and economic policy. The preferential buying habits of the keiretsu kept foreign investors and foreign goods out of their markets, which America criticized as "barriers to free trade". This enabled the keiretsu to enjoy monopoly privileges over the Japanese market, thus maintaining high prices for their goods, as they had full dominance over the price and distribution of products and services throughout the supply side. It is believed that due to this practice, Japan in the late 1980s imported far less than what they should have($40 billion less as per a report by the Brookings Institution).

In such a work environment, the probability of an employee to remain working in the same company for his entire working life was very high. Moreover, this framework allowed rapid co-operative development (sharing vital information, reduction in cost of R&D and higher quality products) of the keiretsu.