HOYA SWALLOWS PENTAX !

The shocking news pop up today, HOYA is TO MERGE PENTAX very soon! See the Hoya Press Release below (officially translated in English):-

http://www.hoya.co.jp/data/current/newsobj-368-pdf.pdf

Here are some facts, quoted from the Press Release above:-

1. The "Merging Company" is HOYA and the "Company to be Merged" is PENTAX;

2. The "Merger of the Two Companies" is expected to be completed by October 1, 2007;

3. "HOYA will be the surviving company", which means that PENTAX is the company which will not survive after the Merger;

4. New Merged Company will be called "HOYA PENTAX HD Corporation", that is, something similar to Konica Minolta when Konica bought Minolta and formed the KM company;

5. Current President & CEO of Pentax Corporation, Fumio Urano, will be downgraded to the Chairman of the Board of Directors and current President & CEO of Hoya Corporation will remain as the President & CEO of the new Merged Company;

6. "Each shareholder of PENTAX common stock will be allotted 0.158 shares of HOYA common stock per PENTAX share", which means that there will be no more PENTAX share/stock as substituted;

Actually, Pentax has also made her own annoucement at Pentax's Japanese website and here is the Press Release (in Japanese):- http://www.pentax.co.jp/japan/news/announce/20061221-02.pdf

To me, this is really a true bad news, as it is fully agreed that Pentax will be "eaten" and "swallowed" very soon by Hoya and the historical old company, Pentax / Asahi, will no longer exist very soon. This would formally mark a full stop for the Asahi Optical Co Ltd, which had its name changed to "Pentax Corporation" just a few years ago.

As an long-time Pentax end-user and a supporter of the company, I found that their optics are far superior to those of Hoya's even just for the protective filters - glass, coatings, workmanship made by Pentax are all far better than those Hoya's offerings, although Hoya's are cheaper. So, I am really upset to see this has happened.

But, anyway, that's the *reality*, no matter anyone feels sad or not.

Update (Dec. 22):
Reuters also have this news reported on the ZDNet, the article link is as follows:-

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6145349.html

Below are a few key quotes from the Reuters' report:-

"Hoya, a Japanese maker of optical glass, plans to buy Pentax for about 91 billion yen ($770 million) in shares" - quite a large figure for the capital amount;

"It will be one of the biggest deals in Japan's precision equipment industry since a merger between Konica and Minolta in 2003";

""The most attractive part about Pentax was its medical business," Hoya's Suzuki said during a press conference", which implies that HOYA's major / top concern will still be on the medical optics business, but not on (Pentax's) photographic equipment. In fact, neither Hoya nor Pentax's Press Releases have much to mention about the business on cameras and lenses, too.

Whilst the future of "Pentax" is still unknown, let's wait and see if the future is brighter, or just the reverse. What I am sure now is that there will be a lot of *changes*, for "Pentax".