Indeed - and I must say that Toyota definitely does not own Yamaha.
It is very common in Japanese business for two companies to own parts of each - making the actual ownership of any given company quite difficult to determine with any certainty. This interlocking ownership model is very prevalent in the auto industry where each major OEM has "its own" family of supplier companies. This often means some measure of mutual financial ownership which helps to stabilize the marketplace and can help to ward off hostile takeovers.
This form of alliance / ownership relationship is called "keiretsu" and it means that the normal competitive environment for automotive parts supply contracts with Japanese OEMs really doesn't exist as it does for western companies. That is why for example, Honda cars and motorcycles virtually all have Keihin carbs and fuel injection equipment and Yamahas virtually all have Mikuni fuel management equipment.
These relationships do also exist in the west (although not really in the recent past) and can even extend to intermarriage among the various major shareholding families, just as the Ford and Firestone families had intermarried as well as having a strong corporate alliance (at least until the Ford Explorer tire failure debacle in the late 1990s - early 2000s).
Anyhow - a very interesting and complex topic.
It is very common in Japanese business for two companies to own parts of each - making the actual ownership of any given company quite difficult to determine with any certainty. This interlocking ownership model is very prevalent in the auto industry where each major OEM has "its own" family of supplier companies. This often means some measure of mutual financial ownership which helps to stabilize the marketplace and can help to ward off hostile takeovers.
This form of alliance / ownership relationship is called "keiretsu" and it means that the normal competitive environment for automotive parts supply contracts with Japanese OEMs really doesn't exist as it does for western companies. That is why for example, Honda cars and motorcycles virtually all have Keihin carbs and fuel injection equipment and Yamahas virtually all have Mikuni fuel management equipment.
These relationships do also exist in the west (although not really in the recent past) and can even extend to intermarriage among the various major shareholding families, just as the Ford and Firestone families had intermarried as well as having a strong corporate alliance (at least until the Ford Explorer tire failure debacle in the late 1990s - early 2000s).
Anyhow - a very interesting and complex topic.
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