“When I’m asked by investors, I tell them they’re No. 1, but it’s not what I really think,” he says. “I speak my mind if shareholders ask strange questions at the annual general meeting. I tell them it would be better if the likes of you didn’t own our shares. I say I can’t choose my shareholders, but you can choose the company you invest in.”
Nagamori says he has no problem with activist investors targeting Japan’s underperforming companies after Abe introduced rules to make domestic firms more responsive. The activists never complain about Nidec, he says.
The eccentric billionaire is the first to admit his own penchant for setting big goals and making them public. And while he sees the same attribute in SoftBank Group Corp.’s Son, even the Japanese tech mogul sometimes falls short of Nagamori’s standards.
About a year or two ago, Nagamori, a SoftBank director, confronted Son after discovering he was having second thoughts about SoftBank’s $21.6 billion takeover of U.S. carrier Sprint Corp. Nagamori, who considers Son an “extremely impressive individual,” urged him to go to America and turn the company around. Son has since stuck with the business.
Don’t Sell
“I told him he mustn’t sell. If you just sell when things are going badly, you’re nothing more than an investor,” Nagamori says. “I told him I can’t give advice on investing, but I can give any amount of advice on running businesses. If you’re going to sell the business, there’s no value in having me around.”
Nagamori decries what he sees as a lack of ambition in Japan. Too many young people are content with only “small happiness,” like going home to their children in the evening rather than working late to become their company’s next president, he says.
Atop Nidec’s headquarters, his green-framed glasses -- the company color -- glinting in the afternoon sun, Nagamori sounds surprised when asked about his dreams after amassing a net worth estimated by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $3.7 billion.
He hardly pauses before giving an answer.
“Making the company bigger and leaving it behind.”