Forbes: Sony is Screwed...Is this article accurate?

[NJ5]

SlorgNet said:

NJ5 said:

Interesting, I had never heard of this Keiretsu name. However according to wikipedia Sony is not in that system. Is this wrong?

 

Wikipedia's information is a bit out of date. The keiretsu used to be relatively autarkic groups, where a cluster of industrial firms had one main bank, one main insurance firm, and one main trading house. During the crisis of the 1990s, though, this model began to break down - banks couldn't bail out firms from the bad debts of the post-Bubble crash. Lots of neoliberal observers, who celebrate Wall Street-style greed and condemn any other form of capitalism as Satanic, doomed or just plain un-American, claimed Japan was toast and Japan Inc. would become just like the US.

Wrong. The Japanese government bailed out its banks, and the keiretsu banks merged into super-banks. One of the great ironies of the neoliberal era is that the keiretsu model was extended to the entire Japanese stock market.

Don't believe me? Crack open any issue of the Japan Company Handbook and look at the shareholdings of the major firms. You'll see widely dispersed networks of shareholdings, concentrated around a few major holders -- MTFG, Mizuho and Sumitomo-Mitsui, plus various government trust funds.

Sony wasn't a traditional keiretsu member, but today that doesn't matter. Any major Japanese company which gets into trouble will get a helping hand from these networks. They're durable, efficient, and are the model for many other booming East Asian economies (especially China).

 

I'm not doubting what you say, except perhaps for the last paragraph. What interest do these networks have in helping competitors? Do you have a source for that?