Mid-term Business Strategy

 Next up is the restructuring of our European business, which is probably worrying you very much.
 As you all know, our European business strategy was to market our U.K.-made products in continental Europe, but the devaluation of the new euro currency has caused the sterling to rise, resulting in the deterioration of the cost competitiveness of our U.K. products.
 NSK has been implementing business restructuring activities since 1998. During this time, we have closed 2 factories (Ferrybridge and the RHP precision bearings plant), downsized our workforce, etc. However, these restructuring measures have not been enough to counter the deterioration of our business results and we were unable to avoid an operating loss of 6 billion yen for 2001.