TOKYO -- A building boom handed four leading Japanese general contractors record net profits in the year ended March despite a deepening labor shortage -- or perhaps because rising labor costs gave companies the upper hand in negotiations.
Obayashi, Kajima, Taisei and Shimizu together booked 558.7 billion yen ($4.93 billion) in operating profit, beating the sum of their initial projections by 49%. A spate of redevelopment projects and infrastructure demand, primarily in the Tokyo area, bolstered their leverage in price talks, fattening profit margins on construction.
