Copyright Bloomberg
Nidec Corp. founder Shigenobu Nagamori once stood alongside his friends SoftBank Group Corp. ’s Masayoshi Son and Fast Retailing Co. ’s Tadashi Yanai , representing a new breed of Japanese entrepreneurs: Brash, ambitious and scathing in their condemnation of establishment, they called themselves “the three big-talking brothers.” Now, Nidec has flagged a series of suspected cases of improper accounting that risk tarnishing the 81-year-old Nagamori’s legacy and the company he founded, while Son and Yanai’s wealth and global prominence have grown. Nagamori’s demands on both himself and others helped make Nidec into the world’s largest maker of motors with a wide lineup of components used in consumer electronics, cars and data centers. But current and former employees and others familiar with the company’s operations also describe a corporate culture where business divisions faced immense pressure from Nagamori and other executives to set what the people say were unrealistic goals that staffers then had to try to deliver.
