7-Eleven Buys Japanese Store Chain

This report, dated December 26, comes from Reuters News Service via CNN's, Money section.

A conglomerate called Seven & I Holdings Company, which owns the 7-Eleven convienence store chain in America and other countries, has purchased 65% of the Japanese retail giant Millenium Retailing Inc. for over one billion US dollars. This was done in light of the global retail colossus Wal-Mart buying the majority of Seiyu Ltd., which Reuters reports is the fourth largest supermarket chain in the country.

Once again, the major international conglomerates play games with the assets and employees of smaller companies, all for the sake of grabbing market share from their fellow huge rivals. In a Distributist society, these super-companies would not exist in the first place. Distributism favors small companies and worker-owned and managed co-operatives, rather than huge companies and chain-store behemoths.

The small stores and co-ops of Japan must band together against both big government and big business. Such financial movements by both Wal-Mart and Seven & I Holdings should be fought tooth-and-nail, as well as such conglomerates broken up into small, more efficient and more humane sizes.