A rising number of blue-chip Japanese companies are cutting staff — a move that used to be seen as a last resort — as a historic boom in the Nikkei puts pressure on firms that have missed out.
Last week, the country’s largest cosmetics brand Shiseido said it was offering early retirement for about 1,500 positions at home. That was days after Omron, a maker of thermometers, sensors, relays and switches, said it would cut about 2,000 positions worldwide, with half to occur domestically. The Kyoto-based manufacturer said it was buying out employees 40 years and older who’d been employed for three years or more.
Such announcements are rare in a country where labor laws are among the strictest in the world. But pressure is mounting on any outliers to a rally that’s lifted the Nikkei 225 Stock Average to a record high. While their peers’ stock prices soar, Shiseido and Omron have slumped roughly 40% from their respective peaks last year, as they grapple with a slowdown in China that’s eroded their bottom lines.