Japanese companies should be snapping up acquisitions all over the world. Balance sheets are light on debt and heavy on cash: Canon, which reported strong first-quarter figures yesterday, has $7.2bn in net cash and equivalents, more than LG Electronics, Ericsson and Xerox put together. Debt has rarely been cheaper, with higher-rated companies paying just a few dozen basis points over government bond yields. Paying with stock should be no stretch either, as the world's highest price/earnings ratios give Japanese issuers the world's lowest cost of equity. Most significantly, there is precious little nominal growth at home, where vested interests – as in the aborted $25bn Kirin/Suntory deal – often get in the way of mergers aimed at making cost savings. The clincher should be the 25 per cent swing in the yen/dollar rate over the past three years, in effect handing bidders who expect the yen to weaken again a control premium for free.
日本企业目前应该在manbetx app苹果 各地出手抢购资产。在它们的资产负债表上，债务负担很轻，现金储备充沛。比如昨日发布强劲一季度业绩的佳能(Canon)，其账上拥有72亿美元净现金及现金等价物，超过了LG电子、爱立信(Ericsson)和施乐(Xerox)三家公司的总和。日本企业的债务成本几乎低得不能再低，评级较高的公司只需支付比政府债券收益率高出十几个基点的价格。以股票支付收购成本也没什么压力：全世界最高的市盈率水平，使日本发行方的股权成本位居manbetx app苹果 最低。最重要的是，其本土市场名义增长率极低，在那里，旨在节省成本的并购交易往往会受到既得利益群体的阻碍。比如，麒麟啤酒(Kirin)和三得利啤酒(Suntory)之间250亿美元的交易就被迫流产。而一个关键因素应该是日元兑美元汇率在过去三年中25%的波动幅度。对预期日元将再次走软的竞购方来说，它们付出的控制权溢价实际上为零。