Foxconn Bought Half of Mitsubishi's Auto-Parts Arm for $728M
The company that builds your iPhone just bought half of a Japanese car-parts giant — and the stock market yawned. On Friday, Foxconn's investment arm agreed to pay ¥115 billion, about $728 million, for 50 per cent of Mitsubishi Electric Mobility, the automotive-equipment unit of Mitsubishi Electric. When trading resumed, Hon Hai closed 1.84 per cent lower in Taipei and Mitsubishi Electric fell 1.04 per cent in Tokyo, per RTTNews. For one of the most consequential Japanese auto deals of the year, the market's verdict was a shrug. The market is wrong. This is not a partnership press release with a photo op. It is the iPhone maker taking a controlling-style half stake — joint operation, board-level, 50-50 — in a century-old Japanese industrial group's car business, with the stated aim of developing next-generation EV platforms in Japan and selling "Made in/by Japan" mobility to the world. Foxconn has spent years saying it wants to do to cars what it did to phones....