Matsushita Electric to become Panasonic Corporation

The change, which was approved by the company’s extraordinary board meeting today, will be submitted for and subject to approval at its ordinary general meeting of shareholders to be held in late June this year.

The company will also abandon the ‘National’ brand, which is used for home appliances and housing equipment in Japan, and replace it by the ‘Panasonic’ brand by the end of fiscal 2010, ending March 31, 2010. Subsequently, the ‘National’ brand will be abandoned and the corporate brands in Japan will be unified to the ‘Panasonic’ Brand.

‘Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.’ has been the company name since 1935, following its earlier names ‘Matsushita Electric Manufacturing Works’ since 1929 and ‘Matsushita Electric Housewares Manufacturing Works’ since 1918 when it was first established. While the company was using ‘National’ and ‘Panasonic’ brand names over the period, it decided in 2003 to unify a global brand into ‘Panasonic’ with the slogan ‘Panasonic ideas for life.’

The timing to change the company name and unify its global brand coincides with Matsushita’s 90th anniversary this year. At the same time, some group companies which currently use ‘Matsushita’ or ‘National’ in their names will also switch their company names to ‘Panasonic.’ Together with the brand unification in Japan, the company will lead all its resources and activities to enhancing the value of ‘Panasonic’ brand.

According to a press release, the new ‘Panasonic Corporation’ and its group companies worldwide will continue to run its business based on its founder Konosuke Matsushita’s philosophy ”A company is a public entity’” and follow his ”Customer-comes-first principle”.

The company is currently operating its business under the GP3 mid-term management plan, which sets a direction toward making ‘Global Excellence’ of its corporate performance with the three pillars Global Progress, Global Profit’ and Global Panasonic.