Japan’s family firms turn to M&A when heirs are not so apparent
A 2025 survey found that nearly two-thirds of business owners’ children did not plan to take over, often because they wanted different jobs
Founder Kiyomi Akagi, now in his mid-sixties, faced a question confronting a growing number of ageing owners: who would take over?
With no successor prepared to manage the company’s 50 restaurants, Akagi chose an increasingly common solution in Japan’s succession crisis – selling the business through mergers and acquisitions to secure its future.
Search funds, private equity firms and M&A brokers are stepping in, reshaping what succession means and looks like in a country where businesses have traditionally passed down through families.
Business-owning families would protect the future of their companies through measures including adopting a male heir with leadership skills. Demographic decline and different attitudes to work, however, have changed the landscape.
Raised in a fishing family in Yamaguchi prefecture, Akagi’s path to the Kobe beef business was anything but direct. Before building the chain, he worked a variety of jobs and ran a seafood izakaya.