eBAY LEAVES JAPAN
eBay Inc. is one of America's great success stories of the Internet bubble period. While other dot.com's are going out of business everyday, eBay remains a very valuable, and profitable, Internet business.
eBay was one of the first auction sites where individuals can auction personal items through a website. The company is the number one auction site in 18 different countries, and has almost 42 million (42,000,000) registered users throughout the world.
For some reason, however, the company has not been successful in Japan. Yahoo! Japan Corp. is the number one online auction site in Japan. eBay only has 25,000 items listed for sale in Japan. Because of this, eBay is only the fourth most popular online auction site in Japan.
Yahoo! Japan Corp. is owned partially by Yahoo Corp. of California and Softbank Corp. of Tokyo. Perhaps because of the strong influence by Softbank, Yahoo has become very popular in Japan.
On March 31, eBay Inc. will close its business in Japan, and will layoff 17 workers. The company did consider buying another auction site, but chose to leave Japan instead.
eBay is not leaving Asia, however. It is buying an auction site in Taiwan called NeoCom Technology Co. Ltd. for $9.5 million ($9,500,000, which is about 126,300,000 yen.) It will use this site to serve the Taiwan, Hong Kong and China markets.
Even after this announcement, eBay's stocks are very strong at about $55 a share since their profits are strong. The company says it may try to enter Japan again in the future, but for now, it is one of the company's few failures.
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NEC Corporation has recently been laying-off many of its workers in its semiconductor plant in Northern California. The company has now announced that it will close a factory in Scotland.
There is hope in California that the machinery from Scotland will come to California, and those products will be made here. However, the company has not decided yet whether or not they will increase production in California.
Gensiro Kawamoto is a Japanese billionaire who owns about 400 houses in Sacramento, California (this is the same Northern California city where NEC is located.)
Mr. Kawamoto announced last month that he is selling all the houses and evicting all of the tenants. This will force over 400 families to try to find new houses.
There has been a tremendous outcry against this decision. Politicians in California, as well as in Japan, have asked Mr. Kawamoto to delay his decision. The Japanese Chamber of Commerce of Northern California and the Japan Business Association in Los Angeles have also written Mr. Kawamoto to change his decision.
Articles about Mr. Kawamoto, and about the situation of the tenants in the houses, have been in the local newspaper everyday. The local paper, the Sacramento Bee, have run extensive coverage of this event.
Based on the political pressure, and the public outcry, Mr. Kawamoto will give the tenants 90 more days to leave the houses. This will greatly help these families find new homes.
It is important to realize that Mr. Kawamoto is obeying the California law. He is only required to give 30 days notice to the tenants to leave. However, never before have so many California families been forced to leave their houses because of one investor.
Now, these families have more time to find new houses. This is a welcome event for these families.
