Mergers and acquisitions activity, once largely a foreign concept in Japanese boardrooms, known mainly from American business school textbooks, is finally coming of age.
Last year, Japanese takeovers of foreign companies neared 20 trillion yen ($184.1 billion at the current exchange rate), a record high. One headline-grabbing deal accounted for a third of the total flow -- Takeda Pharmaceutical's 6.8 trillion yen acquisition of Shire, the Irish biopharmaceutical company.
