June 25th, 3:40 PM.
Near the main gate of Gakushuin University, a very strange scene had appeared.
Six middle-aged men in dark suits were standing under a relatively small patch of shade by the wall.
They had tried their best to step aside.
They were not blocking the school gate, nor were they gathered in the most conspicuous spot; even the three black sedans parked nearby had been driven further away by their drivers.
Yet these six men, the youngest of whom was over thirty, dressed neatly in suits and lined up at the university gate, no matter how one looked at it, found it hard to blend in with the surrounding students carrying books and canvas bags back and forth.
Especially since it was very hot today.
The plum rain had temporarily stopped, and the sun had been hanging in the sky over Tokyo since noon, baking the residual moisture from the ground, making the air humid and stuffy.
The men had been standing there for an hour, and the backs of their shirts were already soaked through.
One of the lawyers finally could not help raising his hand and wiping his brow with a handkerchief.
Two female students who had just walked out of the school gate passed in front of them.
After walking a few steps away, one of them still could not help turning her head back.
"What on earth are those people doing?"
"Who knows."
Her companion also glanced over in this direction.
"They look like bank people."
"Why would bank people stand at the school gate?"
"Maybe... they are here to collect tuition?"
The two of them quickly walked away laughing.
Tsuchiya Yoichi, standing at the very front, heard it, but did not react at all.
Compared to the strange gazes of a few mere college students and whether Sanyo Securities could survive the next few years, it was not worth him wasting his thoughts at all.
He raised his wrist and checked the time again.
It had been one hour and seven minutes.
The executive director beside him saw it too.
"President, should we go back to the car and wait?"
"After going back to the car, can you see every person entering and leaving the school gate?"
The executive director glanced at the students constantly entering and leaving.
"We can have the driver keep an eye out."
"Does the driver know Miss Saionji?"
"..."
The executive director stopped talking.
Tsuchiya looked toward the school gate again.
He was here today to find Saionji Satsuki.
To be precise, he was here to sell Sanyo Securities to her.
Or more precisely, to beg the other party to buy Sanyo Securities.
This thought truly appeared in his mind for the first time at past eleven o'clock last night.
But as for when this matter actually started, it probably had to be pushed back much earlier.
Since last year, Tsuchiya had vaguely felt that Sanyo's situation was somewhat wrong.
After the bubble burst, the securities market grew colder by the day, and the conditions that used to support the company's rapid expansion were slowly disappearing.
Sanyo was still able to operate normally now, and no imminent problems could even be seen on the books, but Tsuchiya increasingly doubted whether the company could continue to move forward in the way it had over the past few years if the market failed to recover for a long time.
Of course, this kind of danger was still far away from "Sanyo Securities is going bankrupt."
The company was far from needing to close its business departments, default on wages, or have banks blocking its doors early the next morning.
It was still a securities firm listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
They had business outlets, corporate clients, and their own trading departments and clearing systems.
Having operated for decades, it was considered well-known in the securities industry.
If any financial magazine suddenly published "Sanyo Securities Management Crisis" today, Tsuchiya even had the confidence to let the legal department send a letter that very day demanding a correction from the other party.
Because strictly speaking, that could not really be considered a fact.
At least not yet.
But Tsuchiya had stayed in the securities industry long enough.
He had worked at Nomura for over a dozen years.
Later, he returned to Sanyo, rising all the way from a director to the position of president.
When others inspected a securities firm, what they most easily looked at was always the stock price, client assets, operating revenue, and book capital.
Tsuchiya looked at more things.
When a securities firm truly began to become dangerous was often long before the financial statements actually started to look ugly.
Banks being willing to lend money today did not mean they would be willing half a year from now.
Corporate clients transferring away only twenty percent of their transactions today did not mean eighty percent would remain next year.
Sales clerks being able to retain clients today by relying on years of friendship—until one day when a client company's chief financial officer was asked at a board meeting—
"Why are you still keeping so many assets here?"
That friendship might no longer be worth anything.
What truly alarmed Tsuchiya was the change that began yesterday.
Nomura's incident had come out.
Nikko had also run into trouble.
Overnight, the phrase "compensating for losses" went from something tacitly understood within the securities industry to an issue discussed by all financial newspapers.
Sanyo was of course not Nomura.
Nor did it have a corporate network as large as Nikko's.
But the truly troublesome part of this matter lay right here.
If even Nomura and Nikko could do such a thing, on what grounds could a securities firm much smaller than them demand that clients unconditionally trust it?
Starting yesterday morning, Sanyo's corporate business department had already received several calls.
One company inquired about account processing over the past two years.
Another requested reconfirmation of all special transactions.
Another had a more polite tone, only saying that the company was recently preparing to "diversify securities trading relationships" and hoped to temporarily transfer a portion of its business to two other securities firms.
Temporarily.
Tsuchiya was very familiar with this word.
When clients transferred business away, they would always say it was only temporary.
When the sales clerk wanted to take that business back a year later, the other party would tell you:
"It is pretty good as it is now."
Last night, he reviewed all the records of those phone calls.
Then he had the finance department redo the numbers for the next three years.
And this time, they were not allowed to use the assumption that the market would rebound quickly.
This time he gave an assumption that appeared very pessimistic in current society—
The Nikkei would remain depressed continuously, perhaps lasting ten, twenty, or even thirty years.
Individual trading volume would decline, and in the foreseeable future, it would continue to decline.
Corporate clients would also begin to diversify their accounts, and business would remain depressed.
After the assumption came out, it even startled Tsuchiya himself.
His sensibility made him unable to believe this assumption, but his rationality told him that this was a possible future.
Although the proprietary trading department could no longer provide profits like it did during the bubble period, business outlets and personnel costs would not disappear along with stock prices.
It was even less possible for the trading and information systems that the company had invested heavily in building over the past few years to stop depreciation just because the market was bad.
If the assumption held true, then not a single company could withstand such excess expenditure over income for more than a decade.
Tsuchiya had always believed that the securities industry would increasingly rely on computers, information processing, and trading systems in the future.
To this day, he did not feel that his judgment was wrong.
He only increasingly clearly realized that he might have overestimated Sanyo's ability to walk alone into that future—they did not have that kind of risk-resistance capability.
During the bubble period, the company expanded too fast.
Business outlets opened more and more, the scale of employees continued to increase, the information systems invested in to catch up with the major securities firms became increasingly expensive, and the affiliated companies under its umbrella also expanded rapidly during that time.
When the market was good, every single one of these things could be regarded as Sanyo's strength.
Once the market grew cold for a long time, the assets and organizational scale that originally supported the company's expansion would instead become a burden that was difficult to quickly cut down.
When the finance department placed several sets of projection results on the desk, Tsuchiya sat alone in his office for a very long time.
The worst set looked very ugly.
Yet what truly made him make a decision was conversely not the worst set.
It was the middle set.
Continuing to operate under a not-so-pessimistic environment, Sanyo could still hold on.
One year, two years, or even longer.
The problem was that for every extra year it held on, the truly valuable things in the company's hands might become a little less.
Clients would leave.
Outstanding sales clerks would leave.
The problems of affiliated companies would become increasingly difficult to handle.
Banks' judgments of Sanyo would also gradually change.
Wait until everyone was clear that Sanyo needed life-saving help before looking for a buyer?
Thinking of this, Tsuchiya laughed at himself.
At that time, would what was being sold still be a securities firm?
Maybe only a license was left, along with a dangling bunch of troubles that needed to be dealt with.
Therefore, last night, for the first time, he changed his perspective.
If Sanyo sooner or later needed stronger capital support, then who needed Sanyo the most right now?
The answer appeared almost immediately.
Saionji.
Thinking of this name, some things from the past few months that originally seemed unrelated suddenly all connected together.
People from Saionji had already contacted Sanyo several months ago, and they asked quite detailed questions.
From securities business licenses and Tokyo Stock Exchange qualifications to corporate business scale, the number of trading department personnel, clearing and settlement capabilities, and even the company's equity structure, the other party had asked about almost every truly valuable part of a securities firm.
At that time, Tsuchiya did not think too deeply about it, simply assuming that Saionji was once again looking for suitable financial investment targets.
After all, over the past few years, the companies acquired by Saionji were simply too numerous; some lacked cash, some mastered the channels they needed, and others just happened to hold certain assets that could not be replaced in the short term.
Being approached by Saionji's people with materials was no longer a rare occurrence in Japan's financial circles today, and Sanyo naturally could also become one of them.
Therefore, at that time, when the other party probed whether Sanyo was willing to introduce Saionji capital, Tsuchiya did not directly refuse.
Capital increases could be discussed, and there was no problem if Saionji wanted to hold a portion of the shares; if the offer was good enough, giving up one or two board seats was likewise not unacceptable.
Yet in Tsuchiya's view, these were merely introducing a powerful major shareholder, and as for letting Saionji truly acquire operational control of the company, he had not even seriously considered it at the time.
Looking back now, he realized that he had missed a very obvious problem at the time.
The number of business outlets, the scale of individual clients, and the market share of regional business departments that Sanyo usually liked to publicize externally—although the other party had also looked at them, they did not probe too much.
What they truly confirmed repeatedly, on the contrary, were the securities business license, Tokyo Stock Exchange qualifications, corporate business, trading and settlement systems, and the trading system already in use.
These things shared one common trait—none of them could be rebuilt temporarily by spending money for a few months after becoming rich.
When Tsuchiya thought of this last night, he understood almost immediately.
What Saionji wanted to buy from the very beginning was not how many clients or how many business halls Sanyo Securities currently possessed.
What they wanted was an entrance to immediately enter the Japanese securities market.
Saionji had been looking for an entrance into the securities industry from the very beginning.
More importantly, they had obviously been preparing for some time.
As soon as the matters concerning Nomura and Nikko broke out, Saionji began to act.
Why did those large enterprises suddenly uniformly re-examine their securities relationships recently?
Was it not Saionji relying on its own influence to make major enterprises take unified action?
Moreover, he also understood that Saionji would definitely not be satisfied at a time like this with continuing to borrow other people's securities counters to do things.
Saionji already had an overseas investment system.
It had its own financial firms, bank relationships, and a massive amount of cash.
And a corporate network that very few securities firms in the whole of Japan could simultaneously access.
Even information and computing facilities had already been built by them in Odaiba.
What Saionji lacked was very little.
Securities happened to count as one.
And in Sanyo's hands happened to be holding this door.
When Tsuchiya thought of this last night, his sleepiness completely vanished.
Sitting in his office, he wrote Sanyo Securities and Saionji separately on two sheets of paper.
The more he wrote, the clearer things became.
If Sanyo entered Saionji, what would happen?
First of all, funds would no longer be a problem.
Those system investments that the finance department had repeatedly calculated over the years and dragged out whenever possible did not even amount to much within Saionji's massive capital expenditures.
Corporate business would also completely change.
In the past, if Sanyo wanted to obtain the primary securities business of a large manufacturing enterprise, it required sales staff to spend several years maintaining the relationship.
What about Saionji?
Sitting in "The Club" were inherently the directors and presidents of those companies.
As for overseas business.
While Sanyo was still researching how to expand overseas trading, S.A. Investment had long been making investments in New York and Europe.
Tsuchiya seriously imagined for the first time:
If Sanyo's trading system, license, and personnel were connected into the computing system that Saionji had already built, and then the corporate network of "The Club" as well as the overseas capabilities of S.A. Investment were brought in—
What would that become?
This question made him quiet in the office for a very long time.
Subsequently, what he thought of was no longer just Sanyo.
He had worked at Nomura for more than ten years.
And naturally knew just how powerful a major securities firm truly was.
Sanyo had all along wanted to move upwards over these years.
Yet no matter how hard they tried, the gap between Sanyo and Nomura still remained right there.
If he continued to guard Sanyo, the best outcome would probably be to continue making the company into a decent quasi-major securities firm.
This was already very good.
The Tsuchiya of the past even felt that this was the most worthy thing to pursue in his career.
Yet now a greater choice was suddenly placed before him.
If in the future Saionji truly built a massive system spanning banking, insurance, securities, overseas investment, and corporate finance—
Who would be in charge of securities?
When Tsuchiya thought of this question, his heartbeat noticeably accelerated for the first time.
Continuing to stay at Sanyo, he was the president of Sanyo Securities.
Handing Sanyo over to Saionji, he would certainly lose some things.
The biggest one was "his own company."
Yet what if he could become the earliest person in charge of Saionji's securities business?
At that time, Tsuchiya sat in front of his desk and slowly picked up the piece of paper with "Sanyo Securities" written on it.
He looked at it for a very long time.
The company's name was of course important.
This company was run by him step by step to this day after returning from Nomura.
If possible, he naturally hoped Sanyo would continue to move upwards.
Going from a quasi-major to a truly major firm, and even one day being able to sit alongside companies like Nomura and Nikko.
Yet Tsuchiya also became increasingly clear that certain gaps could no longer be caught up with by simply opening a few more business departments or investing in another set of systems.
What Sanyo lacked was capital, a larger corporate network, and the foundation to support its true entry into overseas markets.
Although theoretically these things could also be slowly accumulated on one's own.
Only how many years would it take?
Ten years?
Twenty years?
More importantly, would Japan's securities industry continue to give him such a long time moving forward?
Tsuchiya did not know.
Yet if Sanyo was placed into Saionji, these problems would almost all have answers at once.
Saionji already had money, enterprises, an overseas investment system, and sufficiently massive information and computing facilities.
What they currently lacked were precisely those things that Sanyo had held in its hands for decades.
Licenses, exchange qualifications, trading and settlement systems, and a group of people who truly understood the securities business.
The things lacking on both sides could almost fit together just right.
Tsuchiya suddenly discovered that what he had always thought about previously was how to make Sanyo bigger.
Yet perhaps the truly worthy question to consider was never how far the name Sanyo could ultimately go.
Rather, it was where he himself truly wanted to go.
He had stayed at Nomura for more than ten years, then returned to Sanyo, working his way up to president.
Arriving at today, what he was truly interested in had always been securities themselves.
He wanted to know what the trading system could become in the future, how securities firms would use computers and information networks, and also wanted to see where Japanese corporate financing methods, overseas investment, and capital markets would ultimately go.
Then continuing to guard Sanyo's sign did not hold much meaning.
Ultimately, he made a choice that in his later view could be called the wisest—he was going to join Saionji.