Panasonic to buy Sanyo in $9 billion deal

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Panasonic-to-buy-Sanyo-in-9-apf-13875809.html

"TOKYO (AP) -- Panasonic has begun a 800 billion yen ($9 billion) takeover of Japanese rival Sanyo, hoping that transforming into one of the world's biggest electronics companies will help it weather the toughest business conditions in a century...."

I imagine this may expand the availability of Sanyo's Eneloop batteries. - PB

So they are going ahead with it.

Two of my favorite companies coming together.

Makes some sense, Sanyo always struck me as a manufacturing operation rather than a marketing company. Or rather their strength seemed to be there.

So much for competition. Panasonic and Sanyo are the two biggest NiMH battery makers in the world. Just about every brand I can think of is made by one of these two companies. Panasonic or Matsushita makes Rayovac Hybrids, Titanium LSD cells, Ultralast Hybrios, Panasonic Infinitum, and black topped Duracell LSD cells. Sanyo makes cells for Sony, Energizer, Duracell (2650 mA AAs, 1000 mA AAAs, white topped LSD cells), and Rayovac (2300 mA IC-3 15 minute cells), as well as their own high capacity cells and LSD Eneloops. Panasonic invented the Ni-Cd battery and Sanyo invented the NiMH battery. Together, they can probably sue any company they view as competition for patent infringement.

I hope they pool their resources to make better products instead of wiping out the competition and jacking up their prices. Here's hoping that they can make an LSD battery with the energy density of a lithium ion cell without a high failure rate to compete with lithium ion tecnology that is passing them by.

I hope this doesn't adversely affect Eneloops. What sort of "buy" is this, the kind where one company is entirely absorbed, or the kind where the other company (bought company) retains its brand name? I do not know the technical terms.

I started a thread about it in the battery forum when it was originally announced.

The article I linked to at the time indicated the plan was to operate Sanyo as a subsidiary of Pansonic.

EDIT: Here is a link to my previous post...the URL to the news story is now dead, but I had quoted part of the story in my post.

This will be interesting. Lots of consumer level electronics at a near parallel offering will come together with this combination. I see job losses and a reduction in products with this.