Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Comparing productivity of the Japanese and US automobile industries
- 2 The internationalization of the Japanese automotive industry and local production overseas
- 3 The recovery of European and US auto makers, and relocating and changing lean production
- 4 Early 1990s – the Japanese automotive industry loses international competitiveness, and the development of restructuring strategies
- 5 The restructuring of the global automotive and auto-parts industries
- 6 The restructuring of the world's auto-parts industry and the transfiguration of the keiretsu parts transaction
- 7 Global M&A and the future of the global auto industry – the light and dark sides of merger and re-alignment
- 8 The Asian and ASEAN automotive industries in the global era
- 9 China's automotive industry in the global era, Japanese auto makers, and their China strategies
- 10 Conclusion – the global automotive industry's perspective on the twenty-first century and tasks for the Japanese automotive industry
- Epilogue
- Index
Epilogue
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Comparing productivity of the Japanese and US automobile industries
- 2 The internationalization of the Japanese automotive industry and local production overseas
- 3 The recovery of European and US auto makers, and relocating and changing lean production
- 4 Early 1990s – the Japanese automotive industry loses international competitiveness, and the development of restructuring strategies
- 5 The restructuring of the global automotive and auto-parts industries
- 6 The restructuring of the world's auto-parts industry and the transfiguration of the keiretsu parts transaction
- 7 Global M&A and the future of the global auto industry – the light and dark sides of merger and re-alignment
- 8 The Asian and ASEAN automotive industries in the global era
- 9 China's automotive industry in the global era, Japanese auto makers, and their China strategies
- 10 Conclusion – the global automotive industry's perspective on the twenty-first century and tasks for the Japanese automotive industry
- Epilogue
- Index
Summary
The writing of this book culminated in 2008, just as the global automotive industry was hit by the world financial crisis and a global recession. The automotive industry reigned as a leading global industry during the twentieth century – an especially remarkable phenomenon. The fall of the US Big Three, which had led the global reorganization of the industry until ten years ago, is alarming. GM and Chrysler both received public-funds assistance from the government. However, many people doubted the effectiveness of such an immense injection of about 3 trillion yen from public funds.
The causes of the downfall of the Big Three are described in Chapter 7 of this book and were anticipated at the time of writing. However, to summarize simply and without fear of repetition, they are as follows.
The first factor is that the Big Three devoted themselves to short-term profits, finance, and M&A and forgot the origins of manufacturing. This tendency was strong in GM, and the profit structure depended on financial income (consumer finance earnings + sub-prime loans, various financial risk hedging), which rode on the wave of global expansion of credit, which was raised by the sales financing subsidiary of GMAC. Although they are automotive companies, they did not earn their profits from cars but from earnings made through finance, and the stock that was raised.
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- Information
- Japan and the Global Automotive Industry , pp. 314 - 316Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010