Nagamori is the founder and chairman of Nidec, the world’s biggest maker of the motors found in hard disk drives. The Kyoto, Japan-based company is publicly traded and had revenue of 1.5 trillion yen ($13.7 billion) for the year ended March 2019. Since its founding in 1973, Nidec has purchased more than 50 companies.
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The majority of Nagamori's fortune is derived from a 12 percent stake in Nidec, a maker of computer components and appliances. Nidec is the world's largest maker of hard disk drive motors, according to its website. The company had revenue of 1.5 trillion yen ($13.7 billion) for the year ended March 2019, according to the financial results disclosed on its website.
He owns his 12 percent stake directly and through a personal asset firm, SN Kosan, according to its 2018 annual securities report. About 6 percent of his shares have been pledged as collateral and are removed from the net worth analysis.
The value of his cash investments is based on an analysis of dividends, insider transactions, taxes and market performance.
Shiro Ikushimi, a spokesman at Nidec, declined to comment on the net worth calculation.
Shigenobu Nagamori was born into a farming family in Kyoto in 1944. The youngest of six siblings, he opened his own tutoring school to cover the cost of attending high school to study in the electrical department.
After studying electrical engineering at university, Nagamori worked for two engineering companies before establishing Nidec in 1973. Starting with just three employees, he built small motors in a prefabricated shed next to his mother's farmhouse. Failing to land any orders from Japanese companies, Nagamori traveled to the U.S. and signed a contract with 3M to make motors for a tape recorder. That sale proved to be the breakthrough that led to more orders from the U.S. and later Japan.
Nidec's precision motors are now used in everything from refrigerators to cars. It employs more than 96,000 people globally.
Nagamori says he'll continue working until 2030, his target for increasing annual sales to 10 trillion yen. When it does come time to find a successor, he plans to use the same metric his company uses for company promotions: who makes the most money for Nidec.