日経WEEKLY

最近日経WEEKLYにはまってます。1部500円と高価ですがカラフルで見やすくて、サイズもタブロイドなので持ちやすいのです。

毎週は買えませんが月2回くらい購入していく予定です。

Today, I was a bit surprised at a news paper.

According to it, a Japanese tobacco company JT, which is the third-biggest by sales volume in the world, is now performing well.

Due to the several crackdowns by Japanese government, more precisely, the huge decrease of smoking rate by repeated price hike of tobacco, I thought it couldn't have fared well, rather I expected it would reduce its scale.

The article says, there are 2 factors that explain this.

One is their aggressive M&A carried out many times. It seems to have spent more than 3 trillion yen on such deals. Last year, it acquired a major tobacco company in Sudan, which, at the risk of my ignorance, makes me wonder what kind of advantage there is in getting such a firm located in rural area.

The other is their enthusiasm to explore overseas market. One of their efforts for this is the name change of their most popular commodity, MILD SEVEN, which actually my father used to smoke as well, to MEVIUS. It will do so next February because some countries don't allow it to sell MILD SEVEN due to the use of the word "mild".

To be honest, I don't like JT, because it is a company whose products can harm people so much. However, I think a lot of Japanese companies should follow JT's struggle.