Speaking to Inavate, Hartmut Kulessa, head of marketing, Panasonic Visual Systems Europe has confirmed the deal that would have seen financial company Orix acquire an 80% stake in a newly created joint venture called Panasonic Projector & Display has collapsed.
Kulessa said the deal broke down because the two parties "could not agree on the general business outlook," and was also down to "a change in the business environment in the past 12 months, so it has been decided not to continue." He added the announcement from Nikkei had "caught us before we had our own messages ready."
When asked if the business would look for a different investor or partner in the future Kulessa said; "At the moment Panasonic Connect will be the 100% owner of the Panasonic projector and display company. If that is going to change in the future I don't know, but for right now Panasonic will be the 100% owner of that business."
Kulessa was keen to stress that from a Panasonic point of view "the ownership structure or the capital investment that was planned is not at all connected to the new strategy that was presented at ISE 2025."
"We are continuing to place Panasonic Visual Systems into the market as its own entity, a new company was founded globally on April 1 - the Panasonic projector and display company has been founded in Japan (and globally). In Europe this is going to follow in October this year, the delay of six months was always planned, and is because in Europe there are so many countries we need to work with, so we gave it a bit more time, but the process is still on track. Why have we founded it as an owned entity? Because we feel inside the Panasonic Connect conglomerate of product divisions it's difficult to focus on the business, and creating consistent policies for all the businesses is not so easy."
"We announced a new strategy at ISE 2025 to expand our technology portfolio. So rather than only doing projection and flat panel displays we are launching LED products and media players. The fundamental decision to change the technology portfolio from projection and flat panels only into a wider portfolio remains and is going to be continued. With regards to the technology roadmap we are continuing to execute what we announced."
The Mevix sub-brand will continue he says. "Another milestone for us was the introduction of the Mevix brand at Infocomm 2025. We want to have Mevix as a brand identifying products from the projector and display company and we will use that in the future. If you look into the Panasonic universe, in consumer you’ll find Panasonic Lumix for digital cameras and the whole universe of products around it including lenses, camera, etc. For business you’ll find Panasonic toughbook for computer products. Inside Panasonic there is a world of sub-brands, with Mevix we established the sub-brand for visual products."