Omron Corporation recently announced a preliminary agreement to acquire 100% of Pioneer's shares in Pioneer Precision Machinery Corporation (Pioneer PMC).

Over the years, Omron has been concentrating on developing small-size backlight units (BLU) that employs "point light source" method that is low in power consumption and requires few assembly parts, which caters to the growing market in the telecommunication industry with increase features and usage of mobile telephones.

The acquisition of Pioneer PMC will further increase the capability of Omron in this field with the addition of technology to develop small and medium size multiple light source BLU powered by multiple LEDs.

Other than improving on Omron's ability to manufacture, the acquisitions of Pioneer PMC and Tama Fine Opto in 2004, which produces large-size BLUs for used in LCD TV and desktop monitor, will enable Omron Group to offer all types of sizes of BLU, thus enabling them to operate as a major player in the global BLU market.

Omron was recently ranked 4th place in the 2005 Nikkei Corporate Excellence Ranking, making much improvement from the previous position of 37th. This impressive improvement was made possible with the success in the areas of (1)flexibility & social responsibility, (2)research and development; and (3)youthfulness, which together with (4)earnings and growth potential, form the basis of evaluation of the PRISM (Private Sector Multi Evalutation System). PRISM is a multifaceted corporate evaluation system jointly developed by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) newspaper and Nikkei Research.

Of the four evaluation critera, Omron did particularly well in terms of "flexibility and social responsibility", the factor that evaluates a company's CSR commitment and practices but scored relatively low on "earnings and growth potential".