No more Hitachi monitors after July's restructuring

After suffering the shame of pleading guilty in the US Justice Dept.'s ongoing investigation of price fixing in the TFT-LCD monitor industry, Hitachi announced this afternoon, Tokyo time, that it had gone about as far as it could in the present economy, in its current structure. Beginning this July, the division responsible for engineering and building those monitors probably won't even be known as Hitachi.

Spinoffs of the Consumer Business Group and the Automotive Systems Division are now fully underway, with the current executive vice president slated to take charge of the new consumer products manufacturer. That group will still downsize -- or, as Hitachi's statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange calls it, "rightsize" -- to about 750 employees, and will outsource some of its development to Panasonic, so the new company will start out small.

"Following this separation, business resources will be concentrated more than ever on key businesses, and efforts will be made to deepen strategic collaborative creation with business partners," reads Hitachi's statement to the stock exchange. "These measures are the cornerstones of bold initiatives that aim to establish a business structure that can respond adroitly to changes in the marketplace and to restore profitability as quickly as possible and maintain profitability thereafter."

That, as well as to put behind it the shame of its complicity in the price-fixing bust. Though its fine is relatively small ($31 million), Hitachi knows that any major sales it lands with customers such as the US Government -- which still, after all, needs monitors and LCD projectors -- will depend on how its corporate conduct is perceived.

The computer products division will remain part of Hitachi, but going forward, that won't even be the soul of the company. Quite literally, the lithium ion battery division will be elevated to a role of prominence in the company. It's pulling out of retirement Takashi Kawamura, who formerly headed the company's Plant Technologies division as well as its Hitachi Maxell division -- responsible for its lithium-ion batteries -- to serve as the company's new chairman, CEO, and president.

Last month, Hitachi reported its worst corporate loss ever, to the tune of $4.1 billion just for the last quarter and $7.8 billion for the year. It hopes to recoup some $3.1 billion this year in cost-cutting moves.