Aviva is another example of a Keiretsu with a European edge. Aviva plc is the holding company but it propagates the brand name all the way down the business:
Aviva Equity Release
Aviva Pensions
Aviva Annuities
Aviva PPI
Aviva Life
Etc. You get the idea. The power of the brand goes through its veins to the holder. That is the power of the group that the naming incident I mentioned earlier fails to take advantage of.
Now this is a perfect example of the way a Keiretsu is run in the UK. Whereas a Japanese Keiretsu would have a shelf holding company with a non-descript and forgettable name – lets say IRH holdings with a group below it with identical shareholdings but brandable names. In the UK, taking Responsible as an illustration, the holding company would be a brand name – in this case Responsible Life, and the underlings would also be brand-names – in this case Equity Release and Responsible Retirement. That is the key difference. The bigger brand names are behind closed doors. Which is missing a trick in my view simply because the amount of people the holdings usually employ naturally means everyone knows who they are.
Keiretsu is a term I learned in my eastern business module at business school. It means an interlocking group of businesses as a group with similar or identical shareholders. I love the term and is a bit more relevant in the far east, notably Japan that it is here. I will pop up with examples now and again.
Now I’m not too sure what this blog is about or is going to be about. Generally, my background is finance so I will pay homage to this particular subject quite often and before you say it in your head, no its not a boring topic at all. Finance can be everything you want it to be and more, I will try to put a spin on things. Not that I am Stephen D. Levitt or a freakonomist or anything because that would be arrogant beyond belief – those guys are insanely talented and put a lot more research than I ever would into a blog called Keiretsu for crying out loud. I don’t even know what Keiretsu means!
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