Long before activist investors swooped into Japan to shake up conglomerates saddled with losses and legacy assets, Hitachi Ltd. managed to do it on its own, selling off more than $18 billion worth of businesses in the past five years under Chief Executive Officer Toshiaki Higashihara.
The result? A market value that’s more than doubled to 6.2 trillion yen ($54 billion), second only to Sony Group Corp. among Japanese electronics makers and roughly equal to the next two competitors — Panasonic Corp. and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. — combined.
