The man who is money-mad
On Monday last week the president of Livedoor, Takafumi Horie, was arrested. Hearing that, I was very surprised. The Japan times said that:
Livedoor’s aggressive style apparently had a dark side, prompting business leaders to raise questions of ethics after the arrest of Horie and other Livedoor executives.
“What Livedoor has been doing is extremely unique to that company. It was OK for them to act illegally if they were not found out,” said economist Takuro Morinaga, author of the best-seller “The Economics to Survive the Era of Annual Income of 3 Million yen.”
Shigeru Nakajiｍa, an attorney specializing in M&As, said that ideally, companies take over other entities because of the synergic spinoffs of such integration, but Livedoor pursued takeovers without clear synergy.
“The relevancy and necessity of mutual business should come first in doing M&As,” he said.
Before the executives got arrested, I thought that Livedoor was a very smart and great company. Livedoor planned and spread their business not only on the Internet, but also into used cars and real-estate development, amongst other things. Maybe everyone thought that Livedoor is today’s most powerful company. Actually, millions of people use Livedoor’s internet service, and I am one of them. But now that Livedoor’s executives have been arrested, I don’t want to use their Internet service very much; I have a little aversion.
About the former president of Livedoor, Horie Takafumi: I think he is very smart, but sly. It is a well known fact, he said, that “a person’s mind can be bought with money.” Maybe he thought if only there is enough money, it can do everything. Generally, his way of thinking will be disliked and form many enemies. I think he should show some modesty. If so, he might get up and be successful again.
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Comments (1)
Rudolf
wrote on January 31, 2006:
Joi Ito has a very good post on the matter which puts things into perspective.
Joi, a Japanese Internet entrepreneur himself, is primarily annoyed about the media uproar, but he also suggests that Livedoor’s dealings in securities weren’t all that unusual, and that Horie was taken down because he’s made so many enemies among the powerful. Sounds plausible to me.
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