Paper short abstract:

Japanese acquisitions at the periphery of the EU is little known. We are taking Sweden as an example, home of several world-leading companies. We are analyzing four major Swedish companies acquired by large Japanese MNCs from locational, managerial, and R&D perspectives.

Paper long abstract:

With the turmoil associated with the Brexit vote in 2016, many Japanese MNCs started to prepare for relocating their activities out of the UK. Japanese MNCs had already a long history of investments in Europe. Japanese FDIs, ranging from being natural resource-seeking to strategic asset-seeking investments, to the EU can also be seen as a result of an organizational and managerial reorientation of the Japanese corporate landscape that did start by mid-1990s as a direct result of the bursting of the Bubble economy.

In this context, Japanese acquisitions at the periphery of the EU is little known. In this study, we are taking Sweden as an example of a highly developed European industrial nation, home of several world-leading companies. We are analyzing four major Swedish companies acquired by large Japanese MNCs in the 2000s from locational, managerial, and R&D perspectives.

Our results suggest that the Japanese parent MNCs have let the acquired Swedish firms be highly autonomous, allowing them to independently decide on operational issues, business decisions and R&D. We observe high level of trust and respect for the Swedish firms’ market and product knowledge and competencies while refraining from a heavy-handed HQ management by control and fiat.