is a Japanese corporation based in
Umeda,
Kita-ku, Osaka
is one of 24 wards of Osaka in Japan.
Incidents and accidents
2021 Osaka building fire
Notable locations
Kita-ku, particularly the Umeda area surrounding Osaka Station, is one of the main commercial centers of Osaka. Kita-ku is also a fina ...
and
Aoyama,
Minato, Tokyo.
It is one of the largest Japanese ''
sogo shosha'' (general trading companies). Among Japanese trading companies, it is distinguished by not being descended from a historical ''
zaibatsu'' group, but by the strength of its textile business and its successful business operations in China.
It has seven major operational divisions specializing in textiles,
metals/minerals, food, machinery, energy/chemicals, general products/
real estate, and ICT/financial business. Itochu was ranked 72nd on the 2020 list of
Fortune Global 500 companies, with an annual trading revenue of US$100 billion.
Itochu has been one of the most popular employers for graduates of top Japanese universities for over thirty years due to their high pay levels, stability and the diversity of opportunities available to employees. In 2019 and 2020, Itochu was ranked the most popular employer for college graduates.
History
Pre-war years
Itochu started in 1858, shortly after the
opening of Japan to foreign trade, when began door-to-door wholesaling of linen in the regions between
Osaka and
Kyushu
is the third-largest island of Japan's five main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands ( i.e. excluding Okinawa). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regional name referred to Kyushu and its surroun ...
. Itoh founded the "Benichu" drapery store in the Honmachi district of Osaka in 1872. This site was renamed "Itoh Honten" in 1884 and became the Itoh Thread and Yarn Store in 1893, which was renamed "C. Itoh & Co." in 1914.
Chubei Itoh II took over the company following his father's death in 1903. The company opened an office in Shanghai in the 1890s and started business in Seoul in 1905, but had severe difficulties with these first overseas forays. Itoh travelled to London in 1910 and began direct procurement and financing for the business in the London markets, which considerably improved its margins, as it had previously used more expensive intermediaries in Japan.
Itoh's company grew considerably in the wake of
World War I, with offices in the
United States,
India, the
Philippines and China, and the firm began to handle machinery, automobiles and metals in addition to its core business of textiles. However, a recession in 1920 left the company deeply in debt, and unlike the major
zaibatsu firms of the time, it had no captive bank to finance its business. In 1921, the company split in half, with one half forming what is now known as
Marubeni
(, OSE: 8002, NSE: 8002) is a ''sōgō shōsha'' (general trading company) headquartered in Nihonbashi, Chuo, Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the largest ''sogo shosha'' and has leading market shares in cereal and paper pulp trading as well as a st ...
. The company's performance improved in the 1930s, but as
World War II began in the latter half of the 1930s, all trading companies' business became increasingly war-oriented.
In 1941, Itoh and Marubeni re-combined to form Sanko
KK, which merged with two other companies to form Daiken Co., Ltd. in 1944.
Post-war years
After World War II, the constituent companies of Daiken were spun off from each other in December 1949 as part of
GHQ efforts to dismantle the war-era
zaibatsu. Itoh re-listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1950.
On December 1, 1949, the company was
incorporated.
Itoh resumed business in the wake of the war by bartering Japanese textiles for foreign grain, and resumed trading in petroleum, aircraft, automobiles and machinery to meet UN forces requirements during the
Korean War. After the war, Itoh absorbed many smaller trading operations that could no longer stand on their own. Itoh expanded its overseas mining and petroleum exploration activity in the late 1960s and early 1970s, followed by large-scale overseas industrial projects in the 1980s.
Former
Imperial Japanese Army staff officer
Ryuzo Sejima joined Itoh in 1958 after spending 11 years in a Siberian prison. Four years later, he was promoted to director and became Itoh's head of corporate planning, implementing a military-style internal reporting system. He went on to serve as president and chairman of the company, having developed a powerful group of followers known as the "Sejima Machine." In 1970, Sejima and his younger protege Minoru Murofushi arranged a joint venture between
General Motors
The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...
and
Isuzu, one of the first tie-ups between US and Japanese automakers.
In 1972 Itoh became the first Japanese trading company allowed to do business in the
People's Republic of China.
Itoh was headquartered near the site of Chubei Itoh's historical headquarters in Osaka until 1967, when it upgraded its Tokyo branch to the status of a co-headquarters.
In the 1970s, the company became part of the "Kawasaki Group" within the
keiretsu
A is a set of companies with interlocking business relationships and shareholdings. In the legal sense, it is a type of informal business group that are loosely organized alliances within the social world of Japan's business community. The ''ke ...
of
Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank (now
Mizuho Corporate Bank), eventually displacing
Nissho Iwai
is a ''sogo shosha'' (general trading company) based in Tokyo, Japan. It is engaged in a wide range of businesses globally, including buying, selling, importing, and exporting goods, manufacturing and selling products, providing services, and p ...
as the keiretsu's dominant trading company. Itoh's affiliation with the keiretsu was significantly looser than other keiretsu-affiliated trading companies, and many firms within the DKB group did not use Itoh's services at all.
Itoh absorbed
Ataka & Co., the ninth largest general trading company in Japan, in 1977. Ataka had recently suffered major losses from an oil development project in the United States and had undergone restructuring at the direction of its main lender,
Sumitomo Bank.
From the early 1970s Itoh was a major supplier of synthetic yarn (
polyester
Polyester is a category of polymers that contain the ester functional group in every repeat unit of their main chain. As a specific material, it most commonly refers to a type called polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Polyesters include natural ...
) to India's
Reliance Industries Limited.
Over the years, the close collaboration between both companies culminated in the co-promotion of a world-scale
Polypropylene Project with a capacity of 250,000
tonnes per annum
The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United State ...
at a total project cost of Rs. 525 Crores, at
Hazira in the State of
Gujarat. With a $50 million cost for a 15 percent stake,
it was at that point, the largest investment in India by a Japanese firm.
Itoh also marketed products—under their own label—as diverse as a line of bicycles (mostly manufactured by Bridgestone), and computer printers. Itochu began to develop a strong
information technology business in the 1980s through its subsidiary
C. Itoh Techno-Science (CTC), which acted as a Japan distributor for
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...
,
Cisco,
Oracle
An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination.
Description
The word '' ...
and others.
On October 1, 1992, C. Itoh & Co. Ltd. changed its English name to Itochu Corporation, a more direct transliteration of its Japanese name.
By the early 1990s Itochu had become the largest trading company in Japan, but losses from the
Japanese asset price bubble
The was an economic bubble in Japan from 1986 to 1991 in which real estate and stock market prices were greatly inflated. In early 1992, this price bubble burst and Japan's economy stagnated. The bubble was characterized by rapid acceleration ...
, particularly domestic real estate investments, brought it down to third place by the middle of the decade.
In the 1990s Itochu made several investments in the media industry, including a minority stake in
Time Warner and investments in cable and satellite delivery systems.
Uichirō Niwa became president of Itochu in 1998, implementing cuts to unprofitable businesses and cutting back executive perks enjoyed by his predecessor Murofushi.
In 1999, Itochu became one of the first Japanese companies to move away from the traditional seniority-based pay scale, adopting a base pay scale based on responsibilities, impact and value of each position as well as a performance-linked bonus system. Itochu also spun off CTC in 1999, only to see CTC quickly achieve a market capitalization more than twice that of its former parent company.
Masahiro Okafuji became president of Itochu in 2010 and announced a strategy to make Itochu the first-ranked ''sogo shosha'' in areas other than raw resources, particularly in food products and machinery. Under Okafuji's leadership, Itochu implemented a general ban on work after 8 PM with an across-the-board "lights out" policy at 10 PM while encouraging that any necessary overtime be taken in the early morning hours, reducing the total amount of overtime across the company. Itochu moved its Osaka headquarters to the North Gate Building adjacent to
Osaka Station in 2011.
Itochu entered into a cross-shareholding relationship with the Thai conglomerate
Charoen Pokphand (CP) in 2014, and together with CP, agreed to invest over $8 billion in the Chinese state-owned conglomerate
CITIC Limited during 2015, the largest investment ever made by a Japanese general trading company. The transaction was also the largest acquisition in China by a Japanese company, and the largest investment by foreigners in a Chinese state-owned enterprise.
In July 2016, short seller Glaucus Research Group published a report critical of Itochu's accounting practices, causing a stock price dip of around 10%.
As of 2020 Itochu was one of the three largest global
tuna traders along with
Tri Marine
The Bolton Group is an Italian Conglomerate (company), conglomerate that sells products under more than fifty brands.
Overview
The Bolton Groups is a global conglomerate which sells products under more than 50 major brands, primarily consumer go ...
of
Italy and
FCF of
Taiwan.
Berkshire Hathaway acquired over 5% of the stock in the company, along with four other Japanese trading houses, over the 12-month period ending in August 2020.
Offices
ITOCHU's Osaka headquarters is located at the
North Gate Building, 1–3,
Umeda 3-Chome,
Kita-ku, Osaka
is one of 24 wards of Osaka in Japan.
Incidents and accidents
2021 Osaka building fire
Notable locations
Kita-ku, particularly the Umeda area surrounding Osaka Station, is one of the main commercial centers of Osaka. Kita-ku is also a fina ...
, Japan. Its Tokyo headquarters is located at 5-1 Kita-Aoyama 2-Chome,
Minato, Tokyo, Japan.
ITOCHU also has seven branch offices in Japan, sixteen offices and local subsidiaries in China, 24 in Asia, eight in the
CIS
Cis or cis- may refer to:
Places
* Cis, Trentino, in Italy
* In Poland:
** Cis, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, south-central
** Cis, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, north
Math, science and biology
* cis (mathematics) (cis(''θ'')), a trigonome ...
, four in Australia, fifteen in the Middle East, eight in Africa, twelve in Europe, ten in North America and nine in Latin America.
Business overview
Itochu's business is organized into six "companies."
* Textiles: Itochu trades in raw materials and finished apparel, and also has a brand business. It owns a portfolio of investments and rights in well-known fashion brands including
Converse,
Hunting World
Hunting is the human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, or killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to harvest food (i.e. meat) and useful animal products (fur/ hide, bone/tusks, horn/antler, et ...
,
LeSportsac
LeSportsac Inc. is an American handbag, luggage, and travel accessories company. It is owned currently by Itochu Corp.
Company
LeSportsac, Inc. started in 1974, by Melvin and Sandra Schifter as a travel accessories retail company that introdu ...
,
Mila Schön and
Paul Smith Paul Smith or Paul Smith's may refer to:
Music
* Paul Smith (composer) (1906–1985), American film music composer
* Paul Smith (pianist) (1922–2013), Los Angeles jazz pianist
* Paul Smith (rock vocalist) (born 1979), vocalist and songwriter of ...
. In 2018, Itochu acquired the Japanese Master License and exclusive distribution rights for the
Laura Ashley brand.
* Machinery: Includes plant projects, marine, aerospace, automotive, construction/industrial machinery and healthcare. In the automotive sector, Itochu is a partner in the
Yanase imported car dealership and partnered with Mazda and
EnerDel to produce a
solar-charged Mazda2. In the infrastructure sector, Itochu partnered with
Toshiba and
Hitachi
() is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. It is the parent company of the Hitachi Group (''Hitachi Gurūpu'') and had formed part of the Ni ...
to supply infrastructure for the first expressway in
Vietnam, the
North–South Expressway between
Hanoi and
Ho Chi Minh City
, population_density_km2 = 4,292
, population_density_metro_km2 = 697.2
, population_demonym = Saigonese
, blank_name = GRP (Nominal)
, blank_info = 2019
, blank1_name = – Total
, blank1_ ...
. Itochu is also a partner in supplying
rolling stock for the
MTR
The Mass Transit Railway (MTR) is a major public transport network serving :Hong Kong. Operated by the MTR Corporation Limited (MTRCL), it consists of heavy rail, light rail, and feeder bus service centred on a 10-line rapid transit network ...
in
Hong Kong and for
New Generation Rollingstock passenger rail in
Queensland,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
. It is a minority investor in the
Sarulla geothermal power
Geothermal power is electrical power generated from geothermal energy. Technologies in use include dry steam power stations, flash steam power stations and binary cycle power stations. Geothermal electricity generation is currently used in 2 ...
project in
Indonesia and has partnered with
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and
Engie to develop the $15.8 billion
Sinop Nuclear Power Plant
The Sinop Nuclear Power Plant ( tr, Sinop Nükleer Enerji Santrali) is a proposed nuclear plant in Turkey located at Sinop on the Black Sea. Negotiations with Rosatom started in 2022. If constructed, it will be the country's second nuclear power ...
in
Sinop, Turkey.
*Metals and minerals: Engages in mining and ore trading, steel and non-ferrous metal trading, coal and nuclear fuel trading and solar power.
*Energy and chemicals: Trades in oil and gas and a wide range of chemical products such as methanol, PTA and fertilizers.
*Food: Handles production, processing and distribution of various foodstuffs. Two major group businesses are
FamilyMart, acquired from
Seiyu
Voice acting in Japan is an industry where actors provide voice-overs as characters or narrators in media including anime, video games, audio dramas, commercials, and dubbing for non-Japanese films and television programs.
In Japan, and a ...
in 1998, and
Dole Food Company, which sold its worldwide packaged foods and Asia fresh produce businesses to Itochu for $1.7 billion in cash. Itochu is also a strategic partner of
COFCO
COFCO (; full name: China Oil and Foodstuffs Corporation) is a Chinese state-owned food processing holding company. COFCO Group is China's largest food processor, manufacturer and trader. It is also one of Asia's leading agribusiness groups alo ...
in China and owns an export grain terminal in
Longview, Washington.
* ICT, general products and realty: The sixth company handles a variety of business lines including real estate development, logistics, insurance, forest products and information technology. Group companies include
Itochu Techno-Solutions (CTC),
Excite
Excitation, excite, exciting, or excitement may refer to:
* Excitation (magnetic), provided with an electrical generator or alternator
* Excite Ballpark, located in San Jose, California
* Excite (web portal), web portal owned by IAC
* Electron ex ...
Japan and
Century 21 Japan.
Notable people
*
Mac Akasaka
, real name Makoto Tonami (戸並誠 ''Tonami Makoto''), is a Japanese businessman, political activist and perennial candidate. He was born in Nagoya, grew up in a struggling family, and attended Kyoto University. He spent 25 years as an executi ...
, rare earths trader,
perennial candidate in Japanese elections
*
Ichirō Fujisaki
was Japanese Ambassador to the United States from 2008 to 2012. He was previously the Japanese Ambassador to the United Nations and to the World Trade Organization.
Fujisaki attended junior high school in Seattle, Washington as an exchange stu ...
, former Japanese ambassador to the United States, currently member of the Board of Directors of Itochu
*
Hiroyuki Nagahama
is a Japanese politician of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), a member of the House of Councillors in the Diet (national legislature). A native of Tokyo and graduate of Waseda University, he was elected to the House of Representatives for the ...
, member of the House of Representatives and Environment Minister in 2012, worked for Itochu early in his professional career
*
Uichirō Niwa, president from 1998 to 2004, later Japanese ambassador to China
*
Ryūzō Sejima
was a Japanese army officer and business leader.
Early life and military career
Sejima was born in Toyama, Toyama, Toyama, Japan. His father, , was an officer in the Imperial Japanese Army who served under General Nogi Maresuke, Maresuke Nogi du ...
, chairman from 1978 to 1981, Kwantung Army staff officer during World War II
*
Toshiyuki Takano
is a Japanese Ambassador to Germany, previously to South Korea (2002–2005) and Singapore (2001). In February 2005 he sparked a controversy in South Korea when he stated that the Liancourt Rocks in the Sea of Japan
The Sea of Japan is the ...
, retired diplomat, currently executive advisor to Itochu
*
Tsuneharu Takeda is a Japanese diplomat, and former imperial prince. He was born in Shinkyo, then the capital of Manchukuo.
Biography
Takeda is the second son of former Prince Takeda Tsuneyoshi (1909–1992), the second head of the Takeda-no-miya collateral b ...
, former Imperial prince and later ambassador to Bulgaria, worked at Itochu from 1967 to 2005 and served as head of its subsidiaries in Australia and New Zealand.
References
External links
*
* Company history
*
English*
Japanese*
Chinese
{{Authority control
Companies based in Osaka Prefecture
Companies listed on the Osaka Exchange
Companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange
Conglomerate companies of Japan
Conglomerate companies established in 1949
Japanese companies established in 1949
Trading companies established in the 19th century
Trading companies of Japan
1950s initial public offerings