ความคิดเห็นที่ 9
 
มาถึง 2 passage สุดท้ายแล้ว ตอนทำถึงจุดนี้ เริ่มแอบคิดถึงข้าวเที่ยงแล้ว และสิ่งที่ไม่คาดคิดก็เกิดขึ้น เมื่อจู่ๆ ท้องเจ้ากรรมดันร้องขึ้นมาซะงั้น ในห้องกำลังเงียบเลย เรางี้อายมาก แต่ไม่รู้จะทำยังไง ก็เลยต้องเปิดกระดาษไปมา ให้มันมีเสียงกลบ ถ้าเพื่อนๆคนไหนได้ยินก็ขอสารภาพเลยค่ะว่าป็นเราเอง
JAPANESE trading companies have long been reviled by Western businessmen as inefficient middlemen and huge, monolithic entities that strangle the Japanese economy. But as the credit crunch causes firms in America and Europe to flounder for lack of funds, throwing supply-chains into disarray, Japans trading-company model seems to have some merit.
This is because the sogo shosha, or trading houses, have always done far more than make a living from arbitrage and commissions: they also provide credit to the companies within their folds. Private firms in Japan receive more than ¥180 trillion (about $2 trillion) in trade credit and loans from outside the banking sector, with trading companies being most active. That is around two-thirds of the amount they receive from banks, notes Iichiro Uesugi, an economist at Hitotsubashi University.
The five big housesMitsubishi, Mitsui, Sumitomo, Itochu and Marubenitower over corporate Japan and worm their way into almost all business activity. Some date back to the 17th century. They came to the fore during Japans rapid industrialisation in the late 19th century, procuring material from overseas for the resource-impoverished country and handling the export of finished goods. The sogo shosha attracted the brightest and most adventurous graduates. A retired Sumitomo man recalls an arduous elephant ride through the Burmese jungle in the 1950s to explore a mining site. The companies still sometimes act as diplomatic arms of the state.
But the middleman model was abandoned in the 1990s. Now the firms use knowledge of one market to move into adjacent areas, take control of an entire supply chain and improve their pricing power. Mitsubishi,_________, imports food, processes it, distributes it and sells it via convenience stores in which it holds a stake, says Ichiro Mizuno, the firms finance chief. The sogo shosha also anticipate future needs and invest accordingly, for example in rare minerals for electronic firms.
The financing model has changed dramatically. Credit to firms, as a proportion of trading houses total assets, fell by half from its height in the 1970s and 1980s, and in the past 15 years loan guarantees doubled and equity stakes tripled. This suggests that the companies are investing their cash more productively. Moreover, the equity stakes (with handsome dividends) are designed to ensure that the subsidiaries do not outgrow (ie, escape from) their dependence on the trading houses, says a trading-company financier.
In recent years the trading companies fortunes and share prices soared as slow growth at home prompted them to invest in commodities and foreign ventures. But this now makes them vulnerable to the global slowdown, and in recent months their shares have skidded. Even so, Shoei Utsuda, the president of Mitsui, believes the sogo shosha are relatively safe in the economic downturn. We have diversity in our industries and in our geographies, so we are protected, he says.
But not everyone agrees. The danger is that the trading companies ability to provide credit to small and medium-sized firms is itself dependent on their ability to obtain credit from the market, says Nobuo Inaba, a former Bank of Japan official now at Ricoh, an electronics firm. Their ability to manage their balance-sheets to ensure that they can continue to raise funds will determine not just their own prospects, but those of the armada of companies gliding in their wake.
ใน blank ที่หายไปก็คือ For example
it - Mitsubishi
those - prospects
จากคุณ :
grippy 
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วันสิ้นปี 11:33:06
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