THE RANDOM Corporate Serial Killer game goes something like this: take a company, and allow the owner to slay it at will. All products and services would be discontinued, operations shut down and brand names shelved forever. The company would cease to exist. What would be lost - and why is it important for this company to survive?
The game is played in business schools, for hard-nosed financiers who need to reflect on their company's deeper reason for being. Creditors, lawyers and liquidators involved with Akai Holdings are beginning to think they have found an actual corpse.
The one-time electronics mecca and household name - with subsidiaries in Japan, Australia and Europe and turnover of US$1.4 billion in an average good year - has been stripped to a shell.
Set up in 1982, Akai - formerly known as Semi-Tech (Global) - became an electronics manufacturer and distributor in North America, Europe and the Far East.
At its peak, Akai had a 51 per cent stake in sewing-machine company Singer and owned 46.5 per cent of Sansui Electric of Japan, a specialist in high-fidelity equipment. By 1993 it also had a 72 per cent stake in Pfaff, Europe's largest sewing-machine manufacturer and in 1995 it took up 55 per cent of Akai Electric in Japan, a well-known video and audio product manufacturer.
In January 1999 the company had cash of US$262 million and shareholder equity of US$1 billion.
Last summer, Akai Holdings entered the history books for posting Hong Kong's largest corporate loss: US$1.72 billion. This summer, it is being billed as one of Hong Kong's largest corporate collapses. The damage has yet to be assessed in detail - liquidators have only just been appointed to pour over the books and divvy up the spoils - but the signs so far are not good.