In December, Panasonic Corporation quietly began a 9-billion dollar takeover of their rival Sanyo.  Sanyo has been on shaky financial ground since 2006, and the current global economic downturn has not emboldened their ability to recover.  Sanyo’s fall, however, was not as much due to mismanagement as one would believe.  In 2004, their semiconductor plant was destroyed following an earthquake, and they have been unable to recover.

in 2006, large investors such as Goldman Sachs infused the company with approximately 3.2 billion dollars (USD).  However, the caveat was that Panasonic would have first option to purchase the shares that these investors own.  This takeover will create the worlds largest electronics company, with revenues in excess of 110 billion dollars (USD) per year.

Sanyo, in essence, was born from Panasonic.  The founder of Sanyo, Toshio Iue, was the brother in law of Konosuke Matsushita, who was the founder of Panasonic.  Mr. Iue started Sanyo in 1947 manufacturing bicycle lamps in an unused Panasonic plant that was lent to him by Mr. Matsushita.  Once the takeover is complete, however (in April 2009 projected), Sanyo will not disappear.  Panasonic has indicated that they will keep the brand separate.

Sanyo also has close ties to Sony, supporting numerous Sony projects throughout the years, such as Betamax and Video8.  They did not support Blu-Ray, however, though to my knowledge only had one HD-DVD player that made it to market (the HD-S100).  I do not believe that it debuted on North American shores (though it was demonstrated at CES 2006).  This relationship could bring Panasonic and Sony closer together.  Steering forward – now what a merger would that be!

At any rate…looking at Sanyo and Panasonic, they directly compete on a number of different levels.  Specifically, as it related to the consumer electronics industry, projectors.  Sanyo and Panasonic both manufacture LCD video projectors, ranging from very affordable to very high end.  It would make no sense to run two parallel brands competing for the exact same dollar.  The likely scenario would be to manufacture projectors that do not compete with one another, or shut down one brand’s production entirely (and rebrand the other surviving brand).  Thinking forward, they may decide to jump into the DLP side of things, giving Panasonic-Sanyo good coverage for the video projector business.

Of course, digital video projectors are just one small line in both of these massive companies’ global portfolios.  Both companies offer such a dizzying array of products that itemizing them all would take a few pages.  Microwave ovens, washing machines, televisions, solar cells, and more.