, Columnist
Japan’s Legendary Trading Houses Have a New Story
Investors should take another look: The sogo shosha do a lot more than commodities.
They helped build it.
Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
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Japan’s storied trading houses are emerging from the shadow of billions of dollars of impairments they took after the financial crisis and the end of the commodity super-cycle.
Stocks of the so-called sogo shosha, the groups that drove Japan’s postwar export success — the likes of Itochu Corp., Marubeni Corp. and Mitsubishi Corp. — have rallied as much as 36 percent over the last year, outpacing the race to a three-decade high by the broad Topix Index. The trading companies’ free cash-flow levels are above those reached in their heyday, and their leverage much lower.