Branston in a Japanese pickle

[yanpa]

Branston pickle sold to Japanese firm

Second deal between Mizkan and Premier Foods this year after the Japanese company bought the Sarson's, Haywards pickled onion and Dufrais vinegar brands in June

Branston Pickle is being sold to a 200 year-old Japanese vinegar manufacturer for £92.5m, in the latest deal involving an Asian food business and a British household brand.

Branston will join Sarson's and Weetabix in foreign ownership once the deal with Mizkan Group is completed. It will be the second transaction between Mizkan and Premier this year after the Japanese company bought the Sarson's, Haywards pickled onion and Dufrais vinegar brands in June - a month after a Chinese firm bought a majority stake in Weetabix.

Kazuhide Matazaemon Nakano VIII, Mizkan's chief executive, indicated that Branston and Sarson's have not been bought as potential entrants into the Japanese food market. Japan's industrial base has been hit by the high price of the yen and domestic manufacturers have targeted foreign expansion in a bid to keep costs down, as well as using their strong currency to pursue takeovers abroad.

"Branston Sweet Pickle is an iconic brand that has established a market leading position," said the Mizkan boss. "The Branston brand is also an excellent strategic fit with our global portfolio and adds to our solid foundation for growth in the UK."

The deal includes the Branston sweet pickle, ketchup, salad cream and mayonnaise brands as well as the company's factory at Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, which employs 365 people. Premier said it expected "all employees" to transfer to Mizkan once the deal is completed in early 2013.
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[Samurai_Jerk]

What's up with the Mizkan CEO's name?

[Coligny]

What's up with the Mizkan CEO's name?

Certainly an aspiring James Bond Vilain... After the newspaper editor, and the poker player. CEO of a big foodstuff multinationnal could be a little step up...

[Taro Toporific]

What's up with the Mizkan CEO's name?

He must have fun at the ward office trying to write "Kazuhide Matazaemon Nakano VIII" on Japanese forms.

[yanpa]

That might actually be the case:

江戸時代中期の1804年（文化元年）、中野又左衛門により尾張国半田村（現在の愛知県半田市）で酒造業として創業。以後、代々社長は「中野又左衛門」（四代目以降「中埜」）を名乗り、戸籍上の名前も変更している

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ミツカン

[wagyl]

Tangentially, Japanese wikipedia's obsession with who appears in television commercials and which television programmes a company sponsors has always struck me as symptomatic of, well, something or other. I suppose it is not such a research challenge as the corporate homepages love to crow about that stuff too, but it all strikes me, at the very least, as a waste of effort.

I wonder which wikipedia entry started that trend, or whether in fact the templates in Japanese wikiland encourage it. I had a bit of a look at the Japanese wikipedia community portal but it is such a mess of typographic-culturally incongruent drop caps that I recoiled from the ugliness.