Who wants Olympus?

[yoshi]

Terumo, a major medical equipment supplier, made a (most likely) final proposal to Olympus yesterday. Accoring to the idea, Terumo invests money in Olympus for 50 bill. yen and establish a new joint holding company (HD). The HD owns both Terumo and Olympsu as a separate entity.

Until now, four companies show interest in Olympus. They are Sony, Fuji Film, Sony and Terumo. Out of the four, Panasonic has virtually retreated from the deal by now, most likey due to their sharply worsened financial situation. Sony is said to be the major contender. Sony is also ready to lay out money in Oly for the same amount.

What Sony is expecting from the deal are;
1) more efficiency in digi cam business

2) componetn parts sales to Oly's endoscope such as LCD screen

3) Oly's sales network / distribution channel for the medical equipment. Sony also has medical equipment of different categories.

So who wants Olympus badly? - It's Sony!

When viewed from Oly side, the adoption of Sony sensor for OM-D might show that Oly is interested most in Sony?　They are deeply in love with each other?

An US investment fund who has 5% share of Oly is however strongly against such an idea of accepting that huge amount of money from another firm because that causes the dilution of their interest in Olympus. So yet to see what happens.
It was expected before that Oly will make a decision before the end of July.
yoshi

[Ian]

Thanks Yoshi - always very nice of you to send us reports like this. If I may I would like to reproduce this on our other sites?

Ian

[Pops]

Never thought of associating a medical equipment supplier with a camera manufacturer and yet now it seems obvious that the former must be in the market for photographic equipment.
Sticking my neck out here by saying its not something the average man in the street would think about.
I find it fascinating and really must start thinking outside the box a bit more.

[yoshi]

Originally Posted by Ian

Thanks Yoshi - always very nice of you to send us reports like this. If I may I would like to reproduce this on our other sites?

Ian

No problem. Incidentally I find this English article this morning which looks to be more informative. Wall Street Journal.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...372746336.html

yoshi

[yoshi]

Originally Posted by Pops

Never thought of associating a medical equipment supplier with a camera manufacturer and yet now it seems obvious that the former must be in the market for photographic equipment.
Sticking my neck out here by saying its not something the average man in the street would think about.
I find it fascinating and really must start thinking outside the box a bit more.

Yeah, it's much better to have a look at the Olympic Opening Ceremony. It started at five am. in our time!
yoshi

[yoshi]

Maybe I should have added that the investing 50 billion yen into Olympus makes Sony the largest shareholder of Oly but with only 5% share after the private placement of new shares. So it does not make Sony a decisive shareholder of Oly.
From Oly's viewpoint, it does not matter as Sony can not influence Oly's management decision, if in future their opinions are different. My best guess.
Oly is a much larger company than Nikon although smaller than Sony.

Oh, I also find that in my earlier posting I made an error which is obvious for you but let me correct. The four companies are Sony, Fuji Film, Panasonic and Terumo. I wrote Sony twice there instead of Panasonic.

yoshi

[yoshi]

Originally Posted by yoshi

No problem. Incidentally I find this English article this morning which looks to be more informative. Wall Street Journal.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...372746336.html

yoshi

I noticed now that the WSJ requests "subscribe now"
I could read the whole article without the subscription when I found it.

yoshi

[Ian]

Thanks again Yoshi.

Pops - most of the big camera makers in Japan have medical imaging divisions. Olympus is the world leader in endoscopes and famously developed a pill-sized wireless camera that you swallow

It's Olympus' lucrative medical imaging business that is the attraction rather than the camera division which has been a loss-maker in recent years. Indeed, although Olympus is best known for cameras the company first started as a manufacturer of microscopes before WW2.

When Hoya bought Pentax they were only interested in the Pentax medical imaging division and the acquisition of Pentax Cameras by Ricoh was minus the medical division.

Sony is not a major player in medical imaging, and neither is Panasonic so Olympus is attractive to them for those reasons but Panasonic is going through a bad patch with very poor sales of TVs and associated products, so Panasonic can't currently afford a stake in Olympus. Sony has also suffered with the problematical TV sector, but seems more focused on Olympus.

Ian

[yoshi]

Originally Posted by yoshi

Maybe I should have added that the investing 50 billion yen into Olympus makes Sony the largest shareholder of Oly but with only 5% share after the private placement of new shares. So it does not make Sony a decisive shareholder of Oly.

yoshi

It seems around 10% and not 5%. Sorry for the error. Even with 10%, however, Sony won't be a decisive shareholder.

yoshi

[Pops]

Thanks for that info Ian.
I have endured a couple of endoscopies myself but never gave a thought to the source of the photographic equipment. I'll take a lot more notice next time.

[yoshi]

Olympus finally announced today that they accept Sony's money 50 bil. yen.
I wonder what would happen to Pana's sensor business.
yoshi

[Ian]

Hi Yoshi - well, my understanding is that the new Panasonic GH3 also uses the same Sony sensor as the Olympus OM-D E-M5 and of course the two new Olympus Pen models use the same sensor. So it does not look good for Panasonic in terms of sensors for cameras, at least not for system cameras. Of course the sensor manufacturing division is quite separate from the AVC Networks division in Panasonic that includes the Lumix camera division.

Ian